Perez has the track record to lead Labor Department

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President Obama has nominated long-time public servant Thomas E. Perez to serve as our nation’s next secretary of Labor. As leaders of Maryland’s Workforce Investment Board, we had the opportunity to work closely with Perez when he served as secretary of the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing, and Regulation.
 
As Congress considers reauthorization of the Workforce Investment Act, the federal legislation key to so many of the state and local programs we worked on in Maryland, Perez' experience working on this and related issues can be a crucial addition to the national debate.

Perez’s lengthy public service experience and extensive record of collaboration with businesses to address critical workforce development needs makes him uniquely qualified to head the U.S. Department of Labor.
 
During Perez’s time in Maryland, we worked directly with him to institute a set of reforms to strengthen Maryland’s workforce system that helped both businesses and workers. Perez worked to expand training for those already on the job, engage business and industry in workforce training policy, and connect unemployed and underemployed workers to much-needed education, training and, most importantly, good jobs.
 
In the past, a college education or advanced training beyond high school was not required to earn a decent living and to meet the demands of the labor market. But in today’s economy, education and training beyond high school is the difference between poverty and family-sustaining careers. Perez understood that educating and preparing workers for skilled jobs would not only help Maryland’s families, but also its employers and its economy.
 
In the next five years, nearly 80 percent of the jobs in Maryland will require some skills or credentials beyond a high school education. Most of them will be positions that require more than a high school diploma, but not necessarily a four-year degree. These are the jobs we are struggling to fill here in Maryland, and we know it’s the same for other employers throughout the country. If we can’t find people with the latest technical credentials to fill those positions, we cannot expand or compete. We cannot create new jobs.
 
Perez worked with us and other employers in Maryland to ensure industry-driven solutions to this critical issue. Under his leadership, the state convened hundreds of businesses from health care, manufacturing, construction, biotech, and information technology to develop the partnerships needed to address the problem.  
 
He ensured that workforce development efforts were inclusive of all Marylanders, and fit the needs of both workers and businesses – whether it was re-training ex-offenders transitioning out of jail and into a new life; helping qualified foreign-born nurses get licensed so they could help meet immediate hospital needs; or strengthening Science Technology, Engineering and Math education for workers in Maryland’s high tech sector.
 
He took a creative and innovative approach to expanding training options for dislocated workers, veterans, and low-wage, low-skilled and non-English speaking adults, including those who needed better reading, math or English-language skills.
 
Perez brought together all those with a vested interest in a better skilled workforce – businesses, workers, educators, union leaders and community and support service providers – to find solutions that were good for workers, helped businesses grow, and strengthened Maryland’s economy. With his experience, we know he can make a substantial impact on ensuring that our nation’s workforce is well trained, highly skilled and second to none in the world. We look forward to his confirmation, and to the leadership he will bring to this effort in Washington, D.C.

Robertson is the former chairman and Peterson is the former vice chairman of the Governor’s Workforce Investment Board (Maryland).
 
Note: Robertson is the president and CEO of Adventist HealthCare in Rockville, Maryland. Peterson is president of Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System and executive vice president of Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. Their opinions do not represent official positions of either institution.
 

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Awash In Record Profits, Corporations Shift Even More To Offshore Tax Havens

Even as American corporations are raking in record profits, the largest among them are shifting larger amounts of money away from the United States and into offshore tax havens that allow them to pad their bottom lines even more, according to multiple analyses of legal filings made since the beginning of 2013.

The Wall Street Journal found that the 60 largest companies moved $166 billion offshore in 2012, shielding 40 percent of their earnings from American taxes and costing the U.S. billions in lost revenue:

The amount of money at stake is significant, particularly when the U.S. budget deficit is high on the political agenda. Just 19 of the 60 companies in the Journal’s survey disclose the tax hit they could face if they brought the money back to their U.S. parent. Those companies say they might have to pay $98 billion in additional tax—more than the $85 billion in automatic-spending cuts triggered this month after the White House and Congress couldn’t agree on an alternative.

A similar analysis from Bloomberg found that 83 of the largest American companies moved $183 billion overseas in 2012, bringing the total offshore to $1.46 trillion for those 83 companies alone. Most of the companies, like Apple, Microsoft, and Yahoo, have set up subsidiaries in low-tax countries like Bermuda, Ireland, and the Cayman Islands specifically to receive tax benefits. That has ramifications for states, which lost $42 billion in revenue to corporate tax dodging in the last three years alone, and taxpayers and small businesses, who often have to pick up the tab.

And while the debate over corporate tax reform has flared again in Washington, the favorite reform of Republicans and corporate lobbying groups would only exacerbate the problem, making it easier for corporations to push even more money overseas at the expense of revenue and investment that could be made in the United States.

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Groundhog Decade: We’re Stuck In A Movie Where It’s Always the Hottest Decade On Record

Somewhere on a Hollywood movie set for Groundhog Day, Part 2: Bill Murray wakes up to find he’s just lived through the hottest decade on record, just as he did in the 1990s, just as he did in the 1980s. And he keeps waking up in the hottest decade on record, until he gains the kind of maturity and wisdom that can only come from doing the same damn thing over and over and over again with no change in the result. Ah, if only life were like a movie.

Somewhere in PA: Punxsutawney Phil saw the shadow of unrestricted fossil-fuel pollution from Homo “sapiens” sapiens today. That means global warming for another six thousand weeks — and then some (see NOAA: Climate change “largely irreversible for 1000 years,” with permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe).

If we keep listening to the siren song of delay, delay, delay from the anti-science, pro-pollution crowd and their enablers, then eventually people aren’t going to go through this elaborate charade of wondering whether some large rodent in Pennsylvania can predict the weather — the forecast will always be the same, “bloody hot”:

And, as noted, those scientific projections are simply business-as-usual warming.

“Projections of global warming relative to pre-industrial for the A1FI emissions scenario” — the one we’re currently on. “Dark shading shows the mean ±1 s.d. [standard deviation] for the tunings to 19 AR4 GCMs [IPCC Fourth Assessment General Circulation Models] and the light shading shows the change in the uncertainty range when … climate-carbon-cycle feedbacks … are included.”

Under the plausible worst-case scenario of high emissions, high carbon-cycle feedbacks, marmota monax and homo “sapiens” experience much worse by mid-century (see UK Met Office: Catastrophic climate change, 13-18°F over most of U.S. and 27°F in the Arctic, could happen in 50 years, but “we do have time to stop it if we cut greenhouse gas emissions soon”):

If we get anywhere near that outcome, I seriously doubt anybody is going to care about what Punxsutawney Phil thinks about whether it’s going to be an early spring or not.

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Obama, Clinton defend record in Middle East

President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton defended their foreign policy record in the middle East, saying in an interview aired Sunday that they wisely chose not to “shoot from the hip.”

In a joint interview aired on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” the president and secretary of State said the United States has not retreated from the world stage, a charge made by critics urging the Obama administration to do more to intervene in Syria and take a tougher stance with Egypt’s President Mohamed Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Obama cited both Egypt and Libya as instances where his administration played a leading role, saying that former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi “probably does not agree with that assessment” of U.S. retreat.

“We do nobody a service when we leap before we look, where we take on things without having thought through all the consequences of it," Obama said in the interview.

Gadhafi was deposed from power after a NATO-led air campaign backed rebel forces seeking his ouster.

Obama said that in Syria the U.S. needed to tread carefully.

“Syria's a classic example of where our involvement, we want to make sure that not only does it enhance U.S. security, but also that it is doing right by the people of Syria and neighbors like Israel that are going to be profoundly affected by it. And so it's true sometimes that we don't just shoot from the hip,” the president said.

Obama's critics have argued that the administration should do more to help the rebels locked in a civil war with Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces, from providing weapons to creating a no-fly zone. They’ve argued that Obama’s calls for Assad to step down have proven toothless without the support to back up the rhetoric, allowing the death toll to keep rising.

Clinton said the administration has thoughtfully weighed difficult choices in deciding what to do — and not to do —to respond to the civil war in Syria.

“Are there what we call wicked problems like Syria, which is the one you named? Absolutely,” Clinton told “60 Minutes” correspondent Steve Kroft.

“And we are on the side of American values. We're on the side of freedom. We're on the side of the aspirations of all people — to have a better life, have the opportunities that we are fortunate to have here,” she said. “But it's not always easy to perceive exactly what must be done in order to get to that outcome."

Kroft sat down with both Clinton and Obama — at the president’s request — for the interview that aired Sunday, where Obama praised Clinton’s record at State as she prepares to leave the administration.

Both of them played down any questions about Clinton’s potential ambitions in 2016, which have been sparked anew by the joint interview.

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National Security Brief: Number Of Military Suicides Hit Record High

The Washington Post reports that “the U.S. military lost more service members to suicide than combat last year as the number of troops who took their lives rose to a record high.” Nearly 350 active duty servicemembers committed suicide last year while 229 troops were killed in combat in Afghanistan, according to the Post. The AP reported last June that military deaths from suicide outnumbered combat deaths by a 2-to-1 ratio. A month after the AP report, a Pentagon-funded study reported for the first time, scientific data pointing to “intense psychological suffering and pain” as the main cause of military suicides.

In other news:

The New York Times reports: Nearly three years ago, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood delivered a speech urging Egyptians to “nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred” for Jews and Zionists. In a television interview around that time, the same leader described Zionists as “these bloodsuckers who attack the Palestinians, these warmongers, the descendants of apes and pigs. That leader, Mohamed Morsi, is now president of Egypt — and his comments may be coming back to haunt him.”

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Monday pledged American assistance to the French in its campaign to root out extremist militants in Mali.

The Pentagon says that it has improved its most lethal bunker busting bomb, which is now capable of “effectively prosecuting selected hardened, deeply buried targets.”

The Washington Post reports: “Rape has become a “significant and disturbing feature” of the war in Syria, one that many refugees cite as their leading reason for fleeing the country, according to a report released Monday by a New York-based humanitarian organization.” Meanwhile, Syrian warplanes have killed dozens of civilians, including 20 children, in the last few days of bombing Damascus suburbs.

A Washington think tank reported this week that Iran is on track to produce enough material for at least one nuclear bomb by the middle of 2014.

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January 15 News: Beijing Experiences Worst Air Pollution On Record

Skyscrapers are obscured by heavy haze in Beijing Sunday, Jan. 13, 2013. (AP Photo)

On January 12, Beijing’s air pollution reached unprecedented levels, even beyond the upper limits of the Air Quality Index, which reports daily air quality around the world, and it’s taking a serious toll on Beijing’s residents. [ThinkProgress]

According to one hospital official, the number of emergency room patients with heart attacks roughly doubled over the weekend. Hospitals are struggling to handle an influx of people suffering from respiratory and cardiac trouble….

China’s pollution disaster should serve as a warning for American lawmakers who claim environmental regulation hurts business. While US pollution levels are nowhere near China’s, cities like Los Angeles and Birmingham struggle to meet basic federal air quality standards. Despite Republican opposition, the Environmental Protection Agency recently issued more stringent soot standards projected to save roughly 15,000 lives a year, which was published in the Federal Register today. Still, Congressional Republicans have not given up on their long campaign to defund the EPA. As part of the impending “fiscal cliff,” the agency’s clean air program stands to lose more than $100 million in funding.

Several of Washington, DC’s recent summers were unusually hot, and its most recent year was the warmest on record. According to the new federal climate report, that’s likely to become business as usual in the future. [WaPo]

Global green energy investment fell to $269 billion in 2012 after hitting a record high of $302 billion in 2011, with the drop driven largely by reduced activity in the United States. The good news, however, is that 2012's investment level is still the second-highest ever recorded. [Grist]

A coalition of climate groups just sent a letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar asking the Obama Administration to impose a moratorium on fossil fuel development in the Arctic region. The letter comes on the heels of an announcement that the Interior Department will conduct a 60-day assessment of the Arctic offshore drilling program. [Summit County Citizens]

According to leak European Union documents acquired by The Guardian, the British government is seeking to water down EU regulations that would prevent oil and gas drilling projects that could leave ecologically fragile areas vulnerable to oil spills and other accidents. [The Guardian]

The first leg of an undersea power transmission line that would ultimately connect offshore wind farms between New York City and southern Virginia is officially underway. The segment will be 189 miles long and run from Jersey City to an area south of Atlantic City. [NYT]

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NOAA: 2012 Was Officially The Warmest Year On Record For The U.S., Second Most Extreme

Last year was officially the hottest ever recorded for the lower-48 states. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric tallied weather and temperature data for 2012, and found that the year was both the warmest and the second-most extreme for weather ever recorded for the contiguous U.S.

According to NOAA’s latest “State of the Climate” report, the average temperature for the lower-48 states was 55.3°, which is 3.2°F above the 20th century average, and 1.0°F above the previous record-year of 1998.

Last year was marked by an historic drought, above-average wildfires, multiple freak storms that wiped out power to millions, and multiple severe heat waves. According to the U.S. Climate Extremes Index, 2012 was the second most extreme year on record — coming in below 1998, the previous hottest year on record.

Precipitation was also down significantly in 2012. Average rainfall for the lower-48 states was 2.57 inches below average, contributing to the severe drought that gripped the nation and helping make the wildfire season the third most destructive on record.

To see how these and other billion-dollar extreme weather events impacted Americans, check out the Center for American Progress report, “Heavy Weather: How Climate Destruction Harms Middle- and Lower-Income Americans.”

Here’s how NOAA breaks down last year’s temperature records:

U.S. temperature

Every state in the contiguous U.S. had an above-average annual temperature for 2012. Nineteen states had a record warm year and an additional 26 states had one of their 10 warmest.On the national scale, 2012 started off much warmer than average with the fourth warmest winter (December 2011-February 2012) on record. Winter warmth limited snow with many locations experiencing near-record low snowfall totals. The winter snow cover for the contiguous U.S. was the third smallest on record and snowpack totals across the Central and Southern Rockies were less than half of normal.Spring started off exceptionally warm with the warmest March on record, followed by the fourth warmest April and second warmest May. The season’s temperature was 5.2°F above average, making it easily the warmest spring on record, surpassing the previous record by 2.0°F. The warm spring resulted in an early start to the 2012 growing season in many places, which increased the loss of water from the soil earlier than what is typical. In combination with the lack of winter snow and residual dryness from 2011, the record warm spring laid the foundation for the widespread drought conditions in large areas of the U.S. during 2012.The above-average temperatures of spring continued into summer. The national-scale heat peaked in July with an average temperature of 76.9°F, 3.6°F above average, making it the hottest month ever observed for the contiguous United States. The eighth warmest June, record hottest July, and a warmer-than-average August resulted in a summer average temperature of 73.8°F, the second hottest summer on record by only hundredths of a degree. An estimated 99.1 million people experienced 10 or more days of summer temperatures greater than 100°F, nearly one-third of the nation’s population.Autumn and December temperatures were warmer than average, but not of the same magnitude as the three previous seasons. Autumn warmth in the western U.S. offset cooler temperatures in the eastern half of the country. Although the last four months of 2012 did not bring the same unusual warmth as the first 8 months of the year, the September through December temperatures were warm enough for 2012 to remain the record warmest year by a wide margin.

U.S. precipitation

The nationally-averaged precipitation total of 26.57 inches was 2.57 inches below average and the 15th driest year on record for the lower 48. This was also the driest year for the nation since 1988 when 25.25 inches of precipitation was observed.The driest conditions during 2012 occurred across the central United States. Two states, Nebraska and Wyoming, had their driest years on record. Eight additional states had annual precipitation totals ranking among the bottom ten. Drier-than-average conditions stretched from the Intermountain West, through the Great Plains and Midwest, and into the Southeast. Wetter-than-average conditions occurred in the Pacific Northwest, where Washington had its fifth wettest year on record, as well as parts of the Gulf Coast and Northeast.Each season of 2012 had precipitation totals below the 20th century average:

You can read the full report here. Climate Central has a killer interactive detailing the temperature data for each state here. And Peter Sinclair’s latest video, “2012: The Year Climate Change Got Real,” is basically the video version of this report.

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President Obama goes on Record opposing Marbury v. Madison

For a guy who graduated from Harvard Law, Barack Obama is not really very well versed on his right or his legal history. Today about the Supreme Court's review of Obamacare, Obama offered this beautiful and completely ahistorical nugget:

Eventually, I am convinced that the Supreme Court is not what would be an unprecedented extraordinary step will take a law which was passed by a large majority of a democratically elected Congressto tilt.

Look, I'm not here to debate the finer points of Marbury v. Madison with everyone, but the fact remains that that more than 200 years ago, it's not exactly since the judgment rendered "unprecedented and extraordinary" for the Supreme Court to overturn the laws passed by Congress (regardless of the size of most). In fact, it happens all the time. That's the whole point of the doctrine of judicial review, first announced in Marbury and confirmed without serious challenge since then.

I seriously would like to know, and I hope that the press Obama gets on the record on this – it is President Obama the assertion that the Supreme Court's only role in the revision of the legislation is to double-check the count on the roll-call vote to ensure that a majority in fact voted for the law and to check the President's signature for possible falsification? Because, I mean, if that's what we're going to go back, I'm open to having that discussion, but we want to figure out what to do with several hundred SCOTUS decisions taken a decidedly different view.

Of course, in making these comments expose Obama is once again as a cynical hack that itself is devoid of anything resembling shame. The partial birth abortion In 2003 United States Congressional ban law of 2003 by the significantly greater margins than Obamacare. When the Supreme Court refused to this law, which was adopted by a "democratically elected Congress", pitched then-Senator Obama a hissy fit over the fact that the absolute Supreme Court had argued that the clear will of Congress (and the vast majority of the American people).

When its own legislation on the game, however, Obama seems suddenly ready to go back and virtually every Supreme Court precedent in the past 200 years to stripping the Court of their power to close at each question than whether the roll-call was good tallied undo. Of all the most terrible thing is that if a Republican had said this, the media are busy trying to paint them as an uneducated rube would be that unaware of Marbury v. Madison was-if Obama it says, it is presented as a thoughtful defense of his brilliant law.

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