Former Bush Official Slams Social Conservative Leader For Opposing Marriage Equality

Nicole Wallace, a former adviser to President George W. Bush, called out social conservative leader Gary Bauer for his outdated opposition to marriage equality during a discussion on Fox News Sunday about the Supreme Court’s upcoming hearings on the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8.

In a contentious segment, Bauer described the effort to legalize same-sex marriage as a “radical movement” that is “trying to redefine marriage so it is a profoundly unconservative thing.” He accused supporters of marriage equality of being brainwashed by a “full-court blitz by the popular culture” and the “elites,” who, he charged, “intimidate” and “cower people into no longer defending marriage as being between a man and a woman.”

Wallace pushed back against the claims, noting that a growing number of conservatives have evolved in favor of equality and predicting that the Court will come down “on the side of freedom” when it hands down its ruling in June:

WALLACE: Chris, Chris, the biggest problem that Mr. Bauer faces, not just this morning but moving forward is that more than 65% of his own base, self-describing Evangelical Christians, under the age of 33, support marriage equality. 80% of people in this country, right, left, Democrat, Republican, man, woman, support marriage equality. More than 60% of all Americans, everyone, supports marriage equality. And that very some activist court that he railed against, with such hostility this morning always sides on the side of freedom. They are the same court that overturned gun bans, for overreaching. They’re the very same court that overturned campaign finance reform for overreaching, so we can despise the courts for its activism when we don’t like their behavior, but we can’t say that this is a court that always sides on the side of liberals.

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Indeed, a Washington Post poll released on Monday found that 58 percent of Americans now believe it should be legal for gay and lesbian couples to get married, including 81 percent of young people, and 52 percent of Republican-leaning Independents. More conservatives, Evangelicals, Republicans, and senior citizens support marriage than did nine years ago.

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GOP Bill Slams Healthcare Reform Taxes

A new GOP bill would require health insurance companies to describe their tax burden under healthcare reform to consumers in annual statements.

Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), a critic of the Affordable Care Act, said the measure would inform patients about the law's "nearly trillion dollars in taxes" and how they might affect premiums.

"If the federal government is going to play such a big role in our healthcare going forward, we have the right to know just how much it costs us," Walden said in a statement.

Republicans argue that health insurance premiums will spike as a result of the Affordable Care Act. Democrats say the law will slow premium growth and ensure more care for every dollar.

Walden's bill would add several lines to insurers' annual benefit summaries.

Each plan would have to report the amount paid under each of the Affordable Care Act's taxes, including its exchange fees and risk-adjustment charges.

The bill would also require the U.S. Comptroller General to study the law's impact on premiums, specifically its non-discrimination provisions and its essential benefits mandate.

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Elizabeth Warren Slams Republicans For Trying To Weaken Consumer Finance Protections

At a Senate Banking Committee hearing on Thursday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) rebuked Republicans for blocking Richard Cordray’s confirmation as director of her brainchild, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. After a bitter confirmation fight in 2011, President Obama bypassed the Senate using a recess appointment to grant Cordray a temporary term until the end of 2013. Republicans are threatening to filibuster him this time around unless the CFPB is drastically restructured.

Warren declined to question Cordray, who has testified a dozen times. She then directed scrutiny to her Republican colleagues, calling them out for using her former lieutenant’s confirmation as an excuse to undermine the Bureau:

What I want to know is why every banking regulator since the Civil War has been funded outside the appropriations process — but unlike the consumer agency, no one in the U.S. Senate has held up confirmation of their directors demanding that that agency or those agencies be redesigned…I see nothing here but a filibuster threat against Director Cordray as an attempt to weaken the consumer agency. I think the delay in getting him confirmed is bad for consumers, it’s bad for small banks, bad for credit unions, for anyone trying to offer an honest product in an honest market. The American people deserve a Congress that worries less about helping big banks and more about helping regular people who have been cheated on mortgages, on credit cards, on student loans and on credit reports. I hope you get confirmed. You have earned it, Director Cordray.

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Warren herself was ousted from the running for CFPB director in an effort to avoid a confirmation battle with Republicans. Still, Senate Republicans are intent on holding up the confirmation of any director to the Bureau. In a letter to Obama last month, 43 Senate Republicans vowed to filibuster any nominee unless they are allowed to hobble the agency’s authority.

Republicans have tried to weaken the Bureau from its inception, claiming it lacks transparency. Unlike other financial regulatory agencies, which are dependent on Congress for funding, the CFPB is intended to be an independent agency with independent funding. If Republicans get their way, the CFPB will lose this independence, making it vulnerable to the partisan shenanigans and funding shortages that have derailed other regulators.

Cordray’s first term demonstrates the CFPB’s efficacy as an independent agency. In one year, the agency has increased supervision over mortgage lenders, brokers, consumer reporting agencies, and large banks, set up programs to help consumers better understand loan agreements and recoup refunds from deceptive and illegal practices, and wrote new rules to prevent wrongful foreclosures.

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James Hansen Slams Joe Nocera For Failure To ‘Understand Basic Economics’ And Selective Quotation

You might think an A-list business reporter for the NY Times would know basic economics. But not in the case of Joe Nocera.

His umpteenth confused post on the Keystone XL pipeline suggests that when he talks to people like, say, James Hansen, he doesn’t really listen:

On Monday, I finally spoke to Hansen. His knowledge and sincerity are easy to admire, even if his tactics are not. He told me he would like to see oil companies pay a fee, which would rise annually, based on carbon emissions. He said that such a tax could reduce emissions by 30 percent within 10 years. Well, maybe. But it would also likely make the expensive tar sands oil more viable. If you really want to eliminate expensive new fossil fuel sources, the best way is to lower the price of oil, which would render them uneconomical. But, of course, that wouldn’t exactly lower demand either.

#FAIL. Just how admirable is it to interview a world-class expert, mis-state his position, get the economics of his plan exactly backwards, and then disparage his tactics in the pages of the NY Times?

Hansen, as I would assume everyone knows, wants all fossil fuel providers to pay a fee, not just oil companies. Further, Hansen has published what he emailed Nocera:

An economic analysis indicates that a tax beginning at $15/tCO2 and rising $10/tCO2each year would reduce emissions in the U.S. by 30% within 10 years. Such a reduction is more than 10 times as great as the carbon content of tar sands oil carried by the proposed Keystone XL pipeline (830,000 barrels/day). Reduced oil demand would be nearly six times the pipeline capacity, thus rendering it superfluous.

How precisely would a high and rising CO2 tax make the dirty tar sands more viable? In an epic blunder of basic economics, Nocera has apparently confused a higher market price for oil — which would make the tar sands more viable — with what Hansen has actually proposed, a higher price to the consumer and businesses for using carbon-based fuels (but no direct change in the market price).

Ironically, Nocera’s economics are so backwards that he fails to realize that his final lines of snark are also utterly dead wrong. The carbon tax Hansen proposes would clearly lower demand for oil overall, and thus lower the price of oil, which would also undermine the tar sands viability.

And as Brad Plumer notes in his debunking, “No, a carbon tax wouldn’t be good for Canada’s tar sands,” tar sands oil “would be at an even greater disadvantage” since it “is more carbon-intensive than other types of crude, creating 14 percent to 17 percent more greenhouse-gas emissions over its lifespan.”

It is a sad commentary on the state of (lack of?) basic editing at the NY Times that it ran this error-riddled piece.

Finally, if you were seduced by Nocera’s “maybe” into wondering whether a CO2 price rising to $115/tCO2 in 2023 would cut U.S. CO2 emissions by 30%? Well, the Energy Information Administration says that a mere $25/tCO2 would cut CO2 emissions 20% in 10 years. So I think it is rather obvious that another $90/tCO2 on top of that would easily cut emissions 30% (especially since Hansen doesn’t want to stop the CO2 price rise after just 10 years).

As Hansen writes:

Joe Nocera was polite, but he does not understand basic economics.  If a rising price is placed on carbon, the tar sands will be left in the ground where they belong.

Hansen explains why he posted his email to Nocera: “Joe Nocera quoted a private comment from a note explaining that I could not promise I would be back in New York to meet him.  But he did not mention the contents of the e-mail that I sent him with information about the subject we were to discuss.  The entire e-mail is copied below.” In a cover email, Hansen explains, “Apologies to Bill McKibben for the comment that could be misconstrued — I do not question the efforts to wake up the public to the situation at hand, and pressure elected officials to serve the public interest, not special interests.”

Last year, Nocera took exception to my saying he joined “the climate ignorati,” asserting that I was casting him as a “global warming denier.” But as I noted at the time, the ignorati are, as Google reveals, “Elites who, despite their power, wealth, or influence, are prone to making serious errors when discussing science and other technical matters.” The shoe fits.

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