Progressive Breakfast: Obama's Climate Plan: Is It Good Enough?
MORNING MESSAGE
Obama’s Climate Plan: Is It Good Enough?
Fault
lines are emerging in response to President Obama's Clean Power Plan, the EPA
rule designed to cut carbon emissions from power plants 32 percent relative to
their 2005 level by 2030. The Sierra Club hailed the announcement as “the most
significant single action any president has ever taken” while 350.org downplayed
it. “Taking on King Coal is the easy part … decisions on things like the
Keystone XL pipeline, fracking and Arctic drilling are … the true test of
climate leadership,” they said. How can we make sense of it, and what should
citizen-activists do next?
Republicans Plan Climate Attack
Conservative
ready assault on Obama’s climate regs. The Hill: “…the National Mining
Association struck first, lodging a formal request Monday for a stay … [There
will be] legislative maneuvering and legal assaults at both the state and
federal levels. And if all else fails, conservatives say, Obama’s successor
could unwind the regulations, if a Republican wins the White House next
year.”
HuffPost’s
Jonathan Cohn explains how a Republican president could undo Obama’s climate
legacy: “…Congress would pass a law modifying or repealing part of the Clean
Air Act [but it would have to] overcome a filibuster in the Senate. … A
Republican president could … issue a new regulation … But that would still take
time, because regulatory changes happen through a fixed, legally prescribed
process …”
TPP Hits Wall
Big
obstacles to TPP agreement. NYT: “Tokyo was ready to extend major
concessions on American truck tariffs but was blocked by Mexico … Canada held
firm on protecting its politically sensitive dairy market ahead of elections in
October, but for New Zealand … that was unacceptable … And virtually all of the
parties hated American protections of pharmaceutical firms, but a compromise on
that issue could cost the support of Republicans in Congress.”
Secretary
of State Kerry tries to keep momentum alive. NYT: “Days after negotiators
failed to wrap up an Asia trade agreement, Secretary of State John Kerry
expressed confidence on Tuesday that the pact would be completed, calling it
vital for the economic well-being of the region.”
Breakfast Sides
Republicans
may shutdown government over Planned Parenthood. The Hill: “A group of
conservatives in the House have already pledged not to vote for any government
funding bill that includes Planned Parenthood, creating the potential for a
high-stakes battle … ‘I believe we should use every and any procedural tool
available to defund Planned Parenthood,’ Cruz, who is running for president,
told reporters…”
“Conservatives
are trying to prove income inequality is a myth” says LAT’s Michael Hiltzik:
“[Martin] Feldstein urged his readers not to ‘lose sight of how well
middle-income families have actually done over the past few decades.’ …by
defining the ‘middle class’ as those earning the median income, Feldstein is
putting his thumbs on the scale … what were once thought of as middle-class
households have slipped well down the income ladder.”
WH
pushes for lower health insurance premiums. NYT: “…the Obama administration
is trying to persuade states to cut back big rate increases requested by many
health insurance companies for 2016 … In calling for aggressive regulation of
rates, federal officials are setting up a potential clash with insurers. Some
carriers said they paid out more in claims than they collected in premiums last
year…”
Progressive
Breakfast is a daily morning email highlighting news stories of interest to
activists. Progressive Breakfast is a project of the Campaign for America's
Future. more
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Progressive Breakfast: Will Black Lives Matter At the Republican Presidential Debate?MORNING MESSAGE
Will Black Lives Matter At the Republican Presidential Debate?
The
Republican mind seems incapable of embracing “black lives matter,” for to
embrace that phrase means to embrace the idea that racism is not a mindset
displayed by an errant handful of people but is, to use a phrase that President
Obama used in a June podcast interview, a system that is “part of our DNA” as a
country. Defining racism as something that is episodic and individual means that
society at large bears no responsibility to change ... acknowledging, as the
Black Lives Matter movement insists, that we live and operate within the
framework of institutional racism means that changes must come first in the
country’s social, economic and political institutions.
Landmark Rule To Save Climate
Obama
to announce final EPA climate regs on power plants today. WSJ: “…the EPA
sets the first-ever limits on greenhouse gases from power plants, requiring a
32% cut in emissions by 2030 from 2005 levels. The target is ambitious,
requiring deeper cuts than the 30% proposed in a draft rule released last
year.”
Less
reliant on natural gas as initially planned. WSJ: “The draft rule, proposed
in June 2014, relied on a large and early shift from coal power generation to
natural gas. The final regulations would remove that assumption and instead
create a new program that encourages states to deploy more renewable energy and
energy efficiency…”
Deadlines
on states pushed back. Politico: “…it will also delay the initial compliance
deadline for states by two years to 2022. And it will reduce mandates that would
force utilities to employ new, largely untested carbon capture and storage
technology for new coal power plants…”
States
to take lead, but can’t prevent rules. The Hill: “If the states do not
submit plans — as multiple conservative states have threatened — the EPA will
write and impose its own strategies upon them … The new plan also includes
incentives for states to comply early, with matching grants for reductions
before the deadlines.”
Utilities
expected to implement plan despite court challenges. WSJ: “Utility companies
and state regulators will need to rewire the electric grid to accommodate more
renewable power, much of it generated by customers … Utilities, which expect to
spend more than $100 billion next year on capital projects, will adjust their
spending programs to reflect the new rules even as court challenges proceed,
experts said.”
Climate
debate could dominate 2016. NYT: “Most of those changes … would unfold under
the next president … That means that the 2016 field faces a much more specific
question on climate change policy than any of their predecessors have: What
would they do to Mr. Obama’s climate change legacy?”
Trump v. Koch
Koch
brothers bring presidential candidates to meet donors. W. Post: “Charles
Koch on Sunday compared the efforts of his political network to the fight for
civil rights and other ‘freedom movements,’ urging his fellow conservative
donors to follow the lead of figures such as Frederick Douglass, Susan B.
Anthony and Martin Luther King Jr. … During his comments at the donor retreat,
Koch repeatedly cited the effect of big government on the lower class.”
Jeb
Bush flip-flops on taxes when facing Kochs. Tampa Bay Times: “Jeb Bush says
as president he would not accept any tax increases as part of a deal to slash
government spending, going back on what he had to say few years ago … ‘If you
could bring to me a majority of people to say that we’re going to have $10 in
spending cuts for $1 of revenue enhancement — put me in, coach,’ Bush told the
House Budget Committee in June [2012]. ‘This will prove I’m not running for
anything.'”
Scott
Walker pressed at Koch event on subsidizing Milwaukee Bucks basketball stadium.
Washington Examiner quotes exchange with Politico’s Mike Allen: “[ALLEN:]
what a number of your fellow small government conservatives are saying to me is,
how in the hell could you support using taxpayer money for a stadium for an NBA
team co-owned by a billionaire raising money for Hillary Clinton? GOVERNOR
WALKER: Yeah, because in the end it’s like any business person. My state gets
$6.5 million a year…”
Trump
mocks. NYT: “‘I wish good luck to all of the Republican candidates that
traveled to California to beg for money etc. from the Koch Brothers,’ Mr. Trump,
who leads in many national polls, wrote in a Sunday morning Twitter post.
‘Puppets?'”
Biden v. Clinton?
VP
Biden considers running to Hillary’s left. NYT: “One Democratic donor with
direct knowledge of the overtures from the Biden camp said Mr. Biden had already
thought about how he would position himself in the race, delivering an economic
message to the left of Mrs. Clinton’s while embracing Obama administration
policies, like health care reform, that are widely popular among Democrats.”
Friends
of the Earth endorses Bernie. W. Post: “This was the first formal
endorsement by a national group of Sanders’s bid for the Democratic nomination …
Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth[,] pointed to the proposed
Keystone XL oil pipeline as an issue emblematic of the differences his group
sees between Sanders and Clinton.”
Progressive
Breakfast is a daily morning email highlighting news stories of interest to
activists. Progressive Breakfast is a project of the Campaign for America's
Future. more
»
MORNING MESSAGE
Right-Wing Shutdown of Ex-Im Bank Already Threatening to Kill Jobs
Since
congressional Republicans allowed the bank’s authority to expire earlier this
month, credit insurance that customers of U.S. exporters had depended on for a
purchase is not coming through. Bids have to be cancelled or rewritten.
Somewhere around 3,000 smaller U.S. exporters who relied on the bank are feeling
the heat ... Conservatives are using this Ex-Im Bank issue to look like populist
champions fighting against “corporate welfare” ... Don’t believe it. This is
part of a bigger attack against the idea of using government to make the lives
of working people better.
Congress Punts On Transportation Bill
Senate
passes six-year transportation bill. The Hill: “Senators voted 65-34 to
approve the six-year bill, which funds federal highway and infrastructure
projects for three years … Fifteen Republican senators, including three 2016
presidential candidates, bucked McConnell and voted against the proposal.”
Then
passes three-month extension of highway trust fund. Politico: “The Senate on
Thursday cleared a transportation extension to keep highway and transit programs
running through October, sending the bill to the president’s desk just days
before current authority is set to expire … [The] multiyear proposal … will be
the upper chamber’s starting point for fall negotiations with the House.”
Bernie All In On Single-Payer
Sanders
to formally propose single-payer. The Hill: “[He] said Thursday that he will
introduce a single-payer, Medicare-for-all bill ‘in the very near future.’ … A
statement from Sanders’s office after the rally said that the bill would set
‘federal guidelines and strong minimum standards’ but that states would
administer the single-payer programs.”
Sanders
discusses agenda to address institutional racism. USA Today: “Sanders told
USA TODAY on Wednesday that police reforms are needed to control the use of
force and to curb high incarceration rates that disproportionately affect people
of color. And he said politicians must address unemployment among young African
Americans.”
Sanders
criticizes “open borders” as bad for wages. NYT: “The question is whether
there should be ‘a completely open border, so that anybody can come into the
United States of America,’ the senator said. ‘If that were to happen, which I
strongly disagree with, there is no question in my mind that that would
substantially lower wages in this country’ … adding that the percentages of
black and Hispanic people searching for work would only become worse in that
case.”
Hillary Stops Short Of $15
Hillary
suggests she’ll back $12 minimum wage bill sponsored by Sen. Patty Murray. The
Hill quotes: “…let’s actually get behind a proposal that has a chance of
succeeding. And I have seen Patty over the years be able to do just that.”
Many
Dems give Clinton space on Keystone. The Hill: “… Clinton is getting a pass
from many Democrats on Capitol Hill, even those opposed to the pipeline,
something that could undercut the pressure on her to publicly say that the
pipeline should be constructed or shelved.”
Trump’s
ideas for replacing Obamacare sound like Obamacare. Bloomberg: “Trump
proposed: competing private plans (which Obamacare exchanges provide for);
protecting hospitals from catastrophic events (which Obamacare deals with by
requiring people to get insurance so they don’t pass on their emergency care
costs), and government plans for low-income people who get sick and lack options
(which Obamacare does by expanding Medicaid).”
Progressive
Breakfast is a daily morning email highlighting news stories of interest to
activists. Progressive Breakfast is a project of the Campaign for America's
Future. more
»
Progressive Breakfast: Congress' Transportation Stall Is Our Chance to MobilizeMORNING MESSAGE
Congress’ Transportation Stall Is Our Chance to Mobilize
The
Senate is likely as early as today to vote for a three-month extension of
surface transportation programs that the House approved on Wednesday, shelving
for now a six-year bill the Senate had hoped to pass this week. There will be
the usual hand-wringing about Congress being unable to pass relatively
uncontroversial bring-home-the-bacon legislation, but this time short-term
congressional paralysis offers the chance to prevent a long-term
disaster...
Congress' Fall To-Do List Piles Up
House
passes 3-month transportation bill, pushing deadline back to October. The
Hill: “The House is adjourning … But senators are planning to stay in
Washington next week … to finish a six-year transportation bill to jumpstart
conference negotiations … ‘Sen. McConnell and I, while we have a disagreement
over this bill … we both want to get to a long-term highway bill,’ Speaker John
Boehner [said.]”
Debt
limit may also be reached in October. The Hill: “[Treasury Secretary Jack]
Lew told lawmakers that while he cannot pinpoint when the nation would be in
danger of missing debt payments without a borrowing boost, he was confident he
would be able to avoid default until at least late October.”
To
keep government open, Republicans demand stingier spending than what they backed
10 years ago. Politico: “When adjusted for inflation, the level of
nondefense appropriations in 2006 turns out to be almost identical to what
Republicans are now asking Obama to accept for 2016 under the Budget Control Act
… But it ignores the fact that the nation has grown in the past decade, and the
cost of medical services for veterans has exploded … Despite the increase in
student enrollment, aid to the nation’s public schools is significantly less
than what Republicans supported in 2006.”
Ex-Im
Bank could be revived in September, but backers worry. The Hill: “The bank’s
proponents say Ex-Im has the money to get by over the next two months, and they
note that appropriators have included funding for day-to-day operations in next
year’s spending bills. They are eyeing an expected continuing resolution to keep
the government operating past September as a potential vehicle for Ex-Im … [But]
the bank’s supporters are concerned about Speaker John Boehner…”
Small
exporters losing business. Politico: “…Rami Touma, president of
Houston-based oil equipment exporter CECA Supply & Services, said Ex-Im’s
services are critical to his business’s ability to sell products to Algeria …
[Tyler] Schroeder’s Texas crop-dusting manufacturer could lose up to one-fourth
of its sales after losing the bank’s credit insurance … BCH Trading, a lumber
shipper from Arkansas … would have to find an investor to help it access money
needed as collateral for business deals … Private banks won’t lend against the
promise of money by a foreign buyer, which leaves small businesses with few
options.”
Cautious Clinton Worries Dems
Democrats
uneasy with Hillary Clinton’s evasions on controversial issues. The Hill:
“Keystone is far from the only issue on which Clinton has bobbed and weaved. On
the minimum wage, a key issue for many liberals, she has backed a minimum of $15
an hour for fast food workers in New York but has not stipulated a nationally
mandated figure. She avoided taking an unequivocal position on the Trans-Pacific
Partnership (TPP) even as the related debate over fast-track trade authority
roiled Congress last month — and her position remains unclear.”
Sen.
Bernie Sanders hosts 100,000-person virtual organizing rally. NYT: “The
national organizing day, which featured more than 3,500 events and house parties
across the country, centered around a technological infrastructure that uses
text-messaging sign-ups and a deep database of volunteers. Attendees at the
house parties were asked to text a number to opt in and show interest.”
Some
candidates angle for AFL-CIO endorsement. W. Post: “Mike Huckabee met
privately for an hour Wednesday afternoon with the AFL-CIO’s executive council …
[He] was the only Republican presidential candidate … to appear seeking an
endorsement … [He] addressed the executive council immediately before … Maryland
Gov. Martin O’Malley and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders … Hillary Rodham Clinton
and ex-Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) will speak to the group on Thursday.”
Rick
Perry open to Glass-Steagall-type regulations. The Hill “In remarks
delivered in New York, Perry did not mention Glass-Steagall by name, but floated
among several policy proposals one that is practically identical … Perry also
floated an alternate idea of requiring large banks to hold additional capital as
a cushion … While favoring stronger cushions for big banks, Perry argued that
community banks, banks run as partnerships and asset management firms should be
wholly exempted from Dodd-Frank’s new rules.”
Donald
Trump would deport the undocumented, then let the “good” ones back in. CNN:
“‘Legal status,’ Trump suggested. ‘We got to move ’em out, we’re going to move
’em back in if they’re really good people.'”
GDP Ticks Up
GDP
up 2.3% in second quarter. Bloomberg: “Gross domestic product rose at a 2.3
percent annualized rate, and a revised 0.6 percent advance in the first quarter
wiped out a previously reported contraction, Commerce Department data showed
Thursday in Washington … The economy has moved beyond some of the early 2015
constraints including weather and port delays, while cooling global markets, a
strong dollar and insufficient wage gains may continue to limit growth.”
Federal
Reserve could raise rates in September. NYT: “The Fed issued an upbeat
assessment of economic conditions on Wednesday after a two-day meeting of its
policy-making committee … The statement suggested officials didn’t need to see
much more progress before they started to increase their benchmark rate, which
they have held near zero since December 2008.”
Progressive
Breakfast is a daily morning email highlighting news stories of interest to
activists. Progressive Breakfast is a project of the Campaign for America's
Future. more
»
Progressive Breakfast: Did Obama Administration Downplay Malaysia Slavery To Grease Trade Deal?
MORNING MESSAGE
Did Obama Administration Downplay Malaysia Slavery To Grease Trade Deal?
Cheap
labor is the whole point of our corporate-rigged, NAFTA-style trade agreements.
Companies get to move jobs, factories, even entire industries out of the U.S. to
countries where people are exploited, the environment is not protected and
“costs” like human safety are kept low. But even so … tolerating slavery?
Flat-out slavery? Really? Unfortunately, it looks like that’s what is happening
with fast-track trade promotion authority, The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)
and the Obama administration.
Congress Poised To Pass 3-Month Transportation Bill
Senate
bends to House on transportation bill. The Hill: “The House will vote
Wednesday on a three-month highway-spending bill … Senate leaders signaled they
will approve the three-month extension before the end of the week … Republicans
in both chambers said passing the three-month bill would buy time to reach a
deal. ‘I want a long-term highway bill that is fully paid for,’ Speaker John
Boehner said … The decision to fund highways for three months means the
Export-Import Bank loses a vehicle for its charter to be extended.”
House
Dems may not back three-month bill. The Hill: “It’s unclear if there’s any
threat to GOP’s three-month proposal. The five-month bill passed easily,
312-119, but 65 Republicans opposed the measure. If Democrats were unified
against the three-month deal, it could leave GOP leaders struggling to find the
votes. [Rep. Steny] Hoyer noted that the five-month bill provides a convenient
backstop.”
Bernie Takes Aim At Hillary's Climate Plan
Sanders
knocks Clinton on Keystone. The Hill: “‘It is hard for me to understand how
one can be concerned about climate change but not vigorously oppose the Keystone
pipeline.’ [said Sanders.] … The former secretary of State told supporters in
Iowa that she would take a position on the pipeline if she wins the White House
and the fate of the project is still undecided.”
Bernie
proposes 50-state strategy. Bloomberg: “Bernie Sanders is taking a
General-Sherman approach to his summer, barnstorming across a deep South that is
definitely enemy territory for Northeastern liberals … During his speech [in
Louisiana], Sanders criticized the Democratic party for writing off the state.
‘And I’m here to tell you that the time is now for us to fight in 50 states of
the country,’ he said”
Jeb
Bush can’t take credit for Florida’s growth. Bloomberg: “Florida’s economy
grew at a 4.4 percent pace from 1999 through the end of 2006, his years in
office. Trouble is, the policies Bush adopted as governor did little to spur
Florida’s growth, analysts say. That is especially true of the $19 billion in
tax cuts he says he made.”
Major Executive Actions Coming
New
federal college ratings system could reduce student debt. HuffPost: “U.S.
households for the first time would be able to examine how much a college’s
graduates earn and how often its students receive a degree with new data the
Obama administration intends to make public in the coming weeks … Lawmakers may
one day use the information to cut off funding to dodgy schools that saddle
students with debt for worthless credentials.”
Carbon
cutting plan may give states more flexibility: “…some environmental groups
have cautioned that a later deadline for states to comply could make it tougher
for the United States to meet Mr. Obama’s climate change pledges on the world
stage … The looser deadline came after states and electric utilities spent
months appealing to the E.P.A. for more time to comply. The leaders of major
electric utilities warned that the tighter timeline could threaten electric
reliability…”
Progressive
Breakfast is a daily morning email highlighting news stories of interest to
activists. Progressive Breakfast is a project of the Campaign for America's
Future. more
»
