Environment -- John McCain's Incoherent Plan

May 14, 2008

by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Ali Frick, Benjamin Armbruster, and Brad Johnson

ENVIRONMENT

John McCain's Incoherent Plan

On Monday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) delivered a major speech on global warming at the North American headquarters of the Danish wind-power company Vestas. McCain called for an economy-wide cap-and-trade system to regulate and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a program he repeatedly touted as "market-based." In a swipe at President Bush, McCain said, "I will not permit eight long years to pass without serious action on serious challenges." McCain outlined emissions reductions targets that are well short of scientific recommendations but roughly in line with the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act. McCain would allow, at first, unlimited use of domestic and international carbon offsets, give away rather than auction a substantial portion of the original pollution permits, and provide federal spending for energy research and transportation infrastructure.

'INCOHERENT CONSERVATIVE': McCain's climate plan is inconsistent with his far-right fiscal policies, which include opposition to subsidies and hard-line stances on earmarks and discretionary spending. The campaign advertisement touting his global warming stance attacks an "extreme" that "thinks high taxes and crippling regulation is the solution," claiming McCain is offering "a better way." But McCain's cap-and-trade plan involves major new government regulation, spending, and subsidies --while also heavily favoring big business. He refuses to make polluters pay to receive their emissions permits, instead defending a system "equivalent to a government imposed tax that companies levy on their customers but then keep for themselves," a "highly regressive" system of corporate subsidies. McCain's cost-containment policy of unlimited use of domestic and international carbon offsets is, as Center for American Progress Action Fund Senior Fellow Joe Romm explains, "a fraud" that will likely drive billions of dollars to corporations without reducing emissions. In the words of progressive activist Bill Scher, McCain has moved from being an "independent maverick" to an "incoherent conservative." Combined with McCain's call for the federal government to support "the repair and construction of our roads, bridges, railways, seawalls and other infrastructure" needed for global warming adaptation, Romm ironically notes, "Sen. McCain believes in much bigger government than I do."

LOW EXPECTATIONS: McCain benefited greatly from low expectations from most reporters and analysts, who jumped to compare the contrast between McCain's "sanity" on the environment and the Bush administration's eight-year record of denial and delay on global warming. The Associated Press, ABC News, and the Washington Post wrote respectively that McCain "broke with the Bush administration and Republican Party orthodoxy," "broke sharply from the Bush administration on climate change," and "made a sharp break with President Bush." The New York Times emphasized "McCain's break with the Bush administration" but still pointed out that his policy put him "slightly to the right of center in the environmental debate." The Wall Street Journal praised McCain's "courageous and unpopular stand." The Sierra Club's Carl Pope told the Wall Street Journal, "He's certainly better than Bush, and..the average Republican senator." But Pope added: McCain is "dramatically worse than the average Republican governor."

'CONSERVATIVES ARE ANGRY': McCain's global warming plan -- because it makes some effort to address this critical problem -- violates the right-wing ideology that considers any governmental solutions anathema. In the words of Sean Hannity last night on Fox News, "Conservatives are angry." Rush Limbaugh said, "I have not faced a situation where a major Republican presidential candidate sounds just like a liberal Democrat. This is embarrassing, and it is frightening." The National Review's Larry Kudlow lambasted McCain's plan as a "huge government command-and-control operation that taxes, spends, and regulates on a grand scale." Conservative economist Ray Cordato attacked McCain's "massive new tax increase on energy." Newsbusters writer Ken Shepherd said McCain was attempting to put a "Adam Smith happy face on a Karl Marx mandate."

ENVIRONMENTAL HYPOCRISY: McCain's "record of protecting the environment" reduces to three bullet points -- a stance on global warming "that has not kept pace with what the scientists say is sufficient," opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and protection of the Grand Canyon. In the Senate, McCain has opposed environmental legislation over 75 percent of the time. Romm noted that conservatives like McCain who have blocked incentives for American renewable energy companies, "are the main reason McCain has to go to a Danish wind turbine manufacturer to give a climate speech." In fact, the United States was the market leader in wind technology -- following government investments decades ago under President Carter. In the past 26 years that McCain has been in Congress, conservatives "repeatedly gutted the wind budget, then opposed efforts by progressives to increase it, and repeatedly blocked efforts to extend the wind power tax credit." Now the United States is a "bit player" in the $36 billion global market. The same policies have stagnated the domestic solar industry, another high-technology sector innovated by the United States but now dominated by Europe and Japan. McCain justified his opposition to federal support for the renewable energy industry in an interview with Grist: "The wind industry is doing fine, the solar industry is doing fine." In contrast, McCain has opposed removal of oil industry subsidies and called for massive new loan guarantees for the nuclear industry.

ECONOMY -- NEW POLLS SHOWS AMERICANS ARE PESSIMISTIC ABOUT THE ECONOMY: A new Washington Post/ABC News poll finds that "[n]early seven in 10 Americans are worried about maintaining their standard of living, as concern has spiked higher in just the past five months." Soaring consumer prices are also a major challenge, "with many people struggling under the weight of the rising costs of fuel, food and health care." A separate ABC poll released yesterday "showed economic anxiety at its highest level on record since 1981." Similarly, a new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll found that "[m]ost Americans see little hope that the economy will improve in the next six months." All the polls suggested that high gas prices are fueling Americans' negative mood of the economy. The LA Times poll found that Americans "are decidedly pessimistic about the direction of oil prices and inflation," while according to the Post poll, "two-thirds called rising gasoline prices a financial hardship, including a third who said higher pump prices have proved to be a severe burden."

EDUCATION -- UNIVERSITY'S HONORING OF ANTI-FEMINIST PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY CREATES UPROAR: Earlier this month, Washington University in St. Louis announced it would award anti-feminist activist Phyllis Schlafly an honorary degree at Friday's graduation ceremony. The announcement sparked swift protests from students and faculty. Yesterday, 14 faculty members of the Washington University School of Law wrote a sharp letter asking the school's chancellor to rescind the award. They objected to honoring "a person who has devoted her life to staking out and promoting polarizing, anti-intellectual positions" and said her views "are antithetical to some of the most fundamental principles for which this University stands." A petition asking the chancellor to rescind Schlafly's award has 240 faculty signatures. Schlafly was unrepentant, yesterday calling her detractors "a bunch of bitter women," adding, "I'm not going to let a bunch of tacky women ruin my day." Her advice to them? "Get a life. Move on. Try to do something with your life." But Schlafly has vociferously criticized women who do try to "do something" with their lives by working outside the home. "The flight from the home is a flight from yourself, from responsibility, from the nature of woman, in pursuit of false hopes and fading illusions," she once said.

MILITARY -- EIGHT OUT OF 10 SUPPORT A COMPREHENSIVE 21ST CENTURY GI BILL: Though the original GI Bill served as "the engine of opportunity in the postwar years" by paying for veterans to go to college, its benefits today cover "only 60-70% of the average cost of four years at a public college or university. In February, Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA), along with a bipartisan Senate coalition that included Sens. Chuck Hagel (R-NE), Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), and John Warner (R-VA), re-introduced the "21st Century GI Bill," which aims to dramatically expand educational benefits for returning veterans. In a new poll conducted by Whitman Insight Strategies for the Campaign for a New GI Bill, an overwhelming majority of Americans support improving the GI Bill so it can continue to provide "veterans with a funded college education for their service." In fact, more than eight out of 10 Americans said they support a comprehensive GI bill. Although Senate Republicans, led by Sens. Lindsey Graham (SC) and Richard Burr (NC), have introduced a scaled-down version of Webb's bill, but the Whitman poll indicates strong support for Webb's version. Graham's bill reserves the most generous benefits to soldiers who serve as much as 12 years, but 85 percent of respondents said that "all members of the military who have served on active duty since September 11, 2001, including activated reservists and National Guard, should be entitled to increased educational benefits such as college tuition, stipends for books, and tutoring."

In an interview yesterday, President Bush said he wasn't "misled" into invading Iraq. "You know, 'mislead' is a strong word; it almost connotes some kind of intentional -- I don't think so. ... Intelligence communities all across the world shared the same assessment. And so I was disappointed to see how flawed our intelligence was," Bush said. "Do I think somebody lied to me? No, I don't."

On Tuesday, former White House Counsel Harriet Miers predicted that "her constitutional clash with Congress over executive privilege" may not be settled until after Bush leaves office. "It wouldn’t surprise me if it extended beyond this administration," said Miers, who was cited for contempt by Congress after refusing to testify about her role in the U.S. attorney scandal.

President Bush said that when he leaves the White House, the first thing he'll do is resume e-mailing his buddies. "I can remember as governor, I could stay in touch with all kinds of people around the country firing off e-mails at all times of the day to stay in touch with my pals," he said.

U.S. foreclosure filings hit a record high last month, "rising almost 65% over the previous year and putting municipalities at risk by cutting into the value of taxed property." Nearly one in every 519 households received a foreclosure filing in April.

The Senate "rejected a Republican energy plan that promised to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration, an option that was part of an overall package to increase domestic energy development." Instead, the Senate "voted 97-1 to suspend oil deposits in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve" as gas prices continue to climb.

And finally: Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) may sport a "well-coiffed 'do" now, but when he was younger, the senator had "shaggy" hair. Roll Call reports that "it was apparently Coleman's old flowing-locks look that led a local Minneapolis TV station to mix up a photo of the Senator with that of a former member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, who just happens to be a woman." The woman, Sara Jane Olson, was "indicted for setting pipe bombs in a 1975 bank robbery with other SLA members."

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"Starting next year across the country," a new federal requirement will allow rape victims too afraid to go to the police to undergo an emergency-room forensic exam, "and the evidence gathered will be kept on file in a sealed envelope in case they decide to press charges."

CALIFORNIA: "Los Angeles Democrat Karen Bass was sworn in Tuesday as speaker of the California Assembly, the first black woman to lead either house of the state Legislature."

NEW YORK: State's "hospitals stand to lose more than $1 billion in state and federal funds for the training of doctors because of changes to the Medicaid program backed by the Bush administration."

NEW JERSEY: "The state treasurer said Tuesday that New Jersey collected $533 million more than anticipated in 2007 tax revenue, allowing Gov. Jon S. Corzine (D) to soften his proposed budget cuts."

THINK PROGRESS: How the Pentagon propaganda machine worked: "Are you telling me to lie???? surely not! ;)"

WONK ROOM: CNN goes nuts for coal.

GRISTMILL: Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) want answers from Environmental Protection Agency administrator Stephen Johnson about the firing of Mary Gade.

"I remember when [Sergio] de Mello, who was at the UN, got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man's life. And I was playing golf -- I think I was in central Texas -- and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, it's just not worth it anymore to do."
-- President Bush, 5/13/08, asserting that his last game of golf was in August 2003

VERSUS

"Bush's last round of golf as president dates back to October 13, 2003, according to meticulous records kept by CBS news."
-- AFP, 5/13/08

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John McCain's Incoherent Plan

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