Ready For A Thanksgiving Day Dust-Up?

Banning political discussion from Turkey Day would probably be a great idea in many families. But if you have a brother-in-law who parrots, verbatim, the most recent Rush Limbaugh or Michael Savage show every time he opens his mouth, it's probably hopeless. Place settings of the nice red, white and blue illustration above aren't likely to solve anything. Facts don't penetrate the conservative mind. As Ken made clear when he defined "the whole hulking Modern American Right" Tuesday: "Our brains are like a fortress, and no way can you come in."

That isn't going to stop someone like Twitter superstar @LOLGOP from trying. Yesterday he published 5 Things To Tell Your Republican Relatives At Thanksgiving Dinner. "[I]f," he suggests, "you make it to dessert and your uncle wants to rub in some election results, here are a few truth nuggets to salt his defensive wounds. To make sure he takes you seriously, tell him you read them all in email forwards."

1. More net jobs have been created under Obama than under both Bushes combined.

That’s right. In less than 6 years, more new jobs have been created under this president than in 12 full years of George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. As of last August’s jobs report, 5,142,000 net jobs have been created since February 2009. Compare that to 2,637,000 under H.W. and 1,282,000 under W. And we’ve had about 200,000 new jobs a month since then.

Of course, if you don’t subtract the millions of jobs that were lost as Obama inherited W.’s economy, Obama’s number would grow to over 10 million.

Savvy Fox viewers will throw out two counter-spells to undo this unbearable fact. First, we still haven’t recovered all the full-time jobs lost in the Great Recession. Also, the labor force participation rate is at its lowest point since the 1970s. You could then point out that Baby Boomers have started retiring, which is a good thing, and people are spending more time in school. But I’d concede the point. “You’re right,” you can say, as UC Berkeley economist Brad DeLong has. “The economy is crappy. Just far less crappy than it was under both Bushes. And better than just about every other economy in the world.”

And it’s getting better. The rolling average of new unemployment claims-- our best measure of layoffs-- is at its lowest point since 2000. There haven’t been this many job openings since the end of the Clinton administration, and this could easily be the best year of job creation since 1999. And it could be a lot better-- if Republicans weren’t intentionally sabotaging it.

2. If Obama had grown spending the way Reagan or W. did, we’d be much better off.

Like Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan inherited a recession and unemployment over 10 percent. And, much as it did under Obama, our national debt doubled during Reagan’s first term.

Unlike Reagan, who grew spending by 40 percent in his first four years, Obama has cut the deficit every year he’s been in office. The deficit is now lower than it has been since 2008, and even lower this year than what it would have been if we’d implemented Paul Ryan’s radical 2011 budget plan.

Given low inflation and millions of Americans still out of work, this is bad economic strategery. If spending had grown under Obama as it did under W., our gross domestic product would be 2 percent higher and millions more people would be working. And a larger labor force is the only sustainable way to cut the deficit.

“Grumble, grumble, shovel-ready stimulus Solyndra,” your uncle will answer.

Ah. I was hoping he’d bring that up.

3. We need more Solyndras.

Everything Republicans believe about the stimulus is wrong. About 97 percent of economists agree that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act lifted the economy. And the most maligned part of that law was one of its most successful aspects.

In 2012, Michael Grunwald, who literally wrote the book on the stimulus, countered the GOP’s constant harping on the failure of Solyndra Corp., beneficiary of a loan program that fed billions into clean energy, by saying, “More, please!”

“Solyndra was one of the losers, but the winners might change the world,” he wrote.

Grunwald was right-- and the right was wrong. The loan program is now expected to just about break even, but even more important, it has helped create a green-tech industry that barely existed in this country before 2009.

How successful were these profitable cash injections into clean energy?

“The cost of providing electricity from wind and solar power plants has plummeted over the last five years, so much so that in some markets renewable generation is now cheaper than coal or natural gas,” reports the New York Times' Diane Cardwell.

And how did the stimulus make this possible? By doing little things like helping the largest solar plant in the U.S. get up and running.

The affordability of new energy sources, along with America’s oil boom, may be behind Saudi Arabia’s decision to flood the oil market and lower gas prices in hopes of stunting both industries. (Thanks, Obama.)

But the genie is out of the bottle and the world we save may be the one we all currently share.

4. Republicans are paying the richest to get richest-er.

While your uncle is recovering from that news, slip this in: “I really hope Mitt Romney runs in 2016.”

“Me too, I think,” he may reply. “But why?”

“Well, I love documentaries about Mitt Romney losing. Also, I still want to see his tax returns. I think they’re the most important historical documents of the early 21st century. It’s important to know your tax rate is higher than a quarter-billionaire.”

“Um. More pie, please.”

One big reason that President Obama had an easy time making a case about the economy in 2012 is that Mitt Romney was a living example of what’s gone so wrong. Mitt pays around 13 percent in taxes, he claims, while nurses and plumbers pay far higher rates. The richest 400 Americans pay 18 percent on average, probably because they don’t donate as much to their church as Mitt does. That’s down from 30 percent in 1996, just before the GOP demanded a huge capital gains tax cut for the rich in exchange for giving poor kids health insurance. W. cut those rates again and added a huge cut for stock dividends. Because we all know going to the mailbox to get a check is harder work than unclogging a sewer or caring for a sick child.

Tax breaks for investments-- and the people who manage them-- are supposed to grow the economy. Instead, they massively grow the wealth of the richest .01 percent. Between 1929 and 1980, half of all wealth went to the bottom 90 percent. Since then, only 12 percent has.

Inequality is higher than it’s been since 1928. And you know what happened in 1929.

“Then why hasn’t that libturd Obama done anything about it?”

He has. You’ve just been trained to hate it. But here’s the good news.

5. The Affordable Care Act makes you freer-- even if you hate it.

Even if you aren’t one of the 1 in 4 uninsured Americans who has gained health insurance this year, the president’s health law helps you.

At this point your uncle may yell that he lost the plan he loved, or read about someone somewhere who did. Have sympathy. That certainly sucks, and Democrats should have pointed out that some people would lose their plans as the nation moved toward a more secure system-- but no more than lose their plans in a typical year. But what about premiums!? They’re much lower than expected and better, in most cases, than they were before the law took effect.

Now if you lose your insurance, you can still get coverage even if you have a pre-existing condition. This gives you the freedom to start a business or retire early. And the law has added at least a decade of solvency to Medicare so it will be there when you retire. Even people who hate the word Obamacare enjoy the coverage they’re getting.

Under eight years of George W. Bush, 7.9 million Americans lost their health insurance. In just this year, 10.3 million Americans have gained coverage.

But the law isn’t perfect, sure. So invite your uncle to help give the insurance industry some competition by fighting for the right for all Americans to buy into Medicare, regardless of how old they are (or how much pie they’ve eaten).

BONUS: Benghazi!

Now that an eighth investigation has shown that Benghazi was a tragedy, not a scandal, be aware that your uncle will not be ready to accept this inconvenient fact. Urging him to do so may lead to a full-on Bill O’Reilly-type break from reality that could unsettle everyone’s stomachs.

So if at any point you want to change the subject, just say, “Benghazi!” And he’ll start talking about anything else.

Fred Upton Has To Decide-- Is He More Incompetent Or More Corrupt?

K Street's sleaziest lobbyist, Gary Andres (l), found the perfect home with Fred Upton

For all I can I can tell, economist and author David Korten may have never heard of Michigan plutocrat Fred Upton. I haven't noticed that he's mentioned Upton in his newest book, Agenda For A New Economy. But I did notice that in a subchapter, "Winning The Class War," he couldn't have done a better job in describing Upton's political career. The fortunate son of the family that founded Whirlpool generations ago, Upton has devoted his political life entirely to the service of the one percent. Korten doesn't flinch from describing characters like Upton as being engaged in a brutal class war against the rest of us.

Wall Street has been engaged in class warfare pure and simple. It uses its control of the money supply and its political influence to ensure that Wall Street players capture virtually all the benefits of productivity gains in the Main Street economy as interest, dividends, and financial service fees...

This effort to achieve an upward redistribution of wealth was so successful that, from 1980 to 2005, the highest earning 1 percent of the U.S. population increased its share of taxable income from 9 percent to 19 percent. Most of that gain went to the top tenth of 1 percent and came from the bottom 90 percent. In 2007, the top 400 U.S. tax returns reported an average annual income of $345 million; $12.7 million was the average for the top 427 returns in 955, adjusted to 2007 dollars.

The measures used to achieve this remarkable outcome included managing monetary policy to maintain a target level of unemployment, managing trade and tax policies to facilitate the corporate outsourcing of jobs to low-wage economies, suppressing labor unions, limiting the enforcement of law against hiring undocumented immigrant workers, and using accounting tricks that understate inflation to suppress inflation-indexed Social Security increases.

<--- Yep, that's Fred Upton. And just as the NY Times was reporting that this year wage and salaries as a percentage of American GDP hit a new low: 43.7%-- the lowest since 1929-- the Kalamazoo Gazette opened Upton up to a whole new line of criticism. Upton is front and center in one of the most grotesque instances of revolving door corruption in modern American history. Meet Gary Andres, the Solyndra lobbyist-- one of K Street's sleaziest operators-- who Upton persuaded to take a $235,500 a year paycut to go from working at Dutko (for $418,000 annually) to the House Energy and Commerce Committee (as chief of staff for $172,500 annually).

And Upton knew exactly the kind of slimy operative he was engaging.

Upton said in his new role, Andres will take a lead role on the Republicans' efforts to repeal the White House's healthcare bill. The GOP is also expected to fight any new climate change regulations, and the committee should serve as ground zero for those confrontations.

"For over two decades, Gary has been a leading voice in Republican policy, always seeking solutions to advance our principles to limit the size and scope of government," Upton said in a statement.

"Gary knows how to focus like a laser beam to get the job done. He is one of the most respected, most knowledgeable individuals in Republican policy who has advised Presidents and Republican Leaders through the years and has the demeanor and relationships to help advance our agenda."

Andres previous served as deputy assistant for legislative affairs to the first President Bush and was an adviser to President George W. Bush's transition team. He currently services as vice chairman of public policy and research at the lobbying firm Dutko World Wide.

Andres has contributed over $100,000 to Republican politicians-- including Upton-- since 2008, particularly to Members of Congress with suspect ethical standards who were in positions to further the special interests of his clients, like Boehner, Upton, Roy Blunt (R-MO), Richard Burr (R-NC), Connie Mack (R-FL), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Dave Camp (R-MI), Rob Portman (R-OH), Joe Barton (R-TX), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Pete Sessions (R-TX), and John McCain (R-AZ). Previous to that-- from 1990 to 2006-- he contributed over a quarter million dollars to the same calibre of corrupt congressmen willing to sell out their constituents for a few thousand dollars. He donated tens of thousands of dollars to right-wing PACs and thousands directly to a rogues gallery of corrupt Republicans from Tom DeLay (R-TX), Don Young (R-AK) and John Ensign (R-NV) to George Allen (R-VA), J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ) Ed Schrock (R-VA), and Mark Foley (R-FL), each of whom has been involved in shocking-- even by Washington standards-- ethics scandals. Most of the biggest recipients of his legalistic bribes have been driven from office for their criminal and/or ethical conduct. And, now he works for Upton.

Upton... the guy who has, along with career criminal Darrell Issa, made trying to blame Solyndra's bankruptcy on Obama. I wonder why he's so hysterical about it-- or I used to wonder. Now I think I know why... that old subterfuge of getting people misdirected and off the scent. Yeah, I forgot to mention: Upton's boy Andres was a top Solyndra lobbyist. And now Upton has to decide if he's going to plead incompetence or corruption when he's investigated about why he hired someone as conflicted as Andres. Of course, Upton's pretty conflicted himself... always has been. In fact, while he was criticizing the administration for the Bush-initiated failed loan guarantee to the firm Solyndra, he pressured the Energy Department to approve funding assistance for a Michigan solar company, United Solar Ovonics, that said last week it's halting operations.

The loan was never approved by the Energy Department, but Upton’s advocacy for United Solar stands in contrast to his recent skepticism about the government’s clean-energy loan guarantee program.

“It is not the role of government to pick winners and losers,” Upton said in a statement in September regarding Solyndra. “Let’s learn the lessons of Solyndra before another dollar goes out the door.”

In 2009, Upton had also signed letters asking the Energy Department to provide financial assistance to automakers, a wind turbine maker, a biofuels refinery, a smart-grid project, a battery company and a water wave energy firm.

The Energy Department’s “job is to scrutinize applications and identify the best participants, and that’s what the Michigan delegation asked them to do,” said Alexa Marrero, a spokesman for Upton. “Many in Congress questioned whether the stimulus would produce the promised jobs. At the same time, members on both sides of the aisle wanted to see jobs created and folks put back to work, especially in Michigan.”

Congressional Republicans and the administration have sparred for weeks over Solyndra, with many lawmakers charging that the government has been wasting millions of taxpayer dollars funding businesses that never stood a chance.

Last September the Huffington Post reported on Andres' glaring conflict of interest which Upton completely ignored. Early this morning the Kalmazoo Gazette and the Huffington Post broke the story about the Upton/Andres shenanigans. I'll let you know when the House Ethics Committee gets to work on Upton. It's clear that federal prosecutors should also be made aware of the movements involving both Upton and Andres to determine if their actions warrant criminal conspiracy charges. Andres denies knowing Dutko was lobbying for Solyndra; Upton refuses to discuss anything about it with the press (suddenly.) Waltz's comment to the Gazette:

“Congressman Upton knows that Gary Andres was a lobbyist for Solyndra. He has not disclosed that nor has he asked Andres to recuse himself from leading investigations into this matter. We feel that Congressman Upton is guilty of a house ethics violation and should be investigated.”

Meanwhile, though, I want to be clear that Blue America endorsed John Waltz because of who he is, not because of how terrible is opponent is. Sure we've pointed out Upton's cascade of flaws all year, but the reason Blue America continues urging people to contribute to Waltz's campaign is because John is an ideal candidate for ordinary working families. He'll never be part of the conservative consensus of transpartisan corporate shills that have run the country into the ground on behalf of their 1% paymasters... like Fred Upton. Remember, Waltz was the only candidate endorsed by Blue America who "ex"-Blue Dog/DCCC Chair Steve Israel didn't invite to a candidates' forum in Washington last month. Israel's power flows from his ability to aggregate dirty cash from Wall Street, K Street and the institutions of the 1%. He probably doesn't feel especially comfortable when Democrats say things like what Waltz told us about OccupyWallStreet:

"What started out with a handful of folks on a windy day in Kalamazoo ended up growing into a protest with over 200 people as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Talking to several folks I could tell that they were frustrated that the top one percent of this nation is being coddled while the rest of us are getting trampled on. I heard concerns that ranged from economics to education and they were focused on making a difference.

"It was an honor to take part in this day of action in Kalamazoo. While we marched the streets with the sound of chants and drums there were several folks who were honking in support. It appears that the sleeping masses have awoken and there is a sea change coming. Question is whether this can be sustained and the answer I heard was a resounding yes."

You won't hear anything like that from the Fred Uptons or the Steve Israels of the world.

Perhaps if the administration had shown any interest in going after corruption, it would be better able to defend against fake scandals

Typically, the administration has let discussion of the Solydra "scandal" be carried on by scum-encrusted right-wing liars and ignoramuses.

"Solyndra was a big bet that happened to go bad. But we probably need to be making more bets like it."

-- James Surowiecki, in his New Yorker
"Financial Page" piece this week, "A Waste of Energy?"

by Ken

Last night I whined about the president's astonishing press-conference statements deflecting responsibility for pursuing financial-industry law-breaking. (His basic answer, you'll recall, was what law-breaking? They just exploited loopholes, which we fixed with Dodd-Frank.) In my mind there's a real connection between the administration's across-the-board refusal to look at the kinds of corruption and illegality it apparently doesn't care about (financial, military, war-crimes-related, and so on) and its inability to defend itself against bogus allegations.

Maybe, I'm thinking, when you sign off on a decade's' worth of actual law-breaking and ethical breaches, you're hamstrung when it comes to trumped-up or made-up accusations by right-wing scumbags whose entire careers (entire lives?) are built on law-breaking and ethical breaches. Which brings us to the Solyndra solar-panel-production "scandal." I'm not saying there are no questions here worth answering, but it's hard to see where there's any legitimate ground for scandal-mongering. Did any of the mud-slingers anticipate that the Chinese would get into solar production in such a massive (and of course government-supported) way, thereby shooting the hell out of the economics of U.S. manufacture? No, I didn't think so.

Of course, for the right-wing scum it's a splendid opportunity to sound their familiar tune that government is no good, when the reality is that they're no good, and whether by design or sheer ineptitude, most any governmental undertaking they undertake will turn to doody. Doody-making is really what they're best at.

"Washington being what it is," says The New Yorker's James Surowiecki on his "Financial Page" this week (that's the October 10 issue), "A Waste of Energy?," "the backlash against green subsidies is no surprise. But it’s an overreaction every bit as hysterical as the pro-Solyndra hype was."

Despite legitimate qualms about government-driven industrial policy, Surowiecki argues, it has scored notable successes in a number of developed (as opposed to developing) countries ("many economists argue that government intervention in the market was instrumental in the postwar rise of countries like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan; more recently, Germany has built a sizable solar industry using subsidies"), and alternative energy is exactly the sort of field where it's most appropriate, because so much of the potential reward would accrue to society generally rather than to customers ("that means that the economic rate of return is significantly less than the social rate of return"), and also because "energy markets are dominated by entrenched, regulated companies, and that reduces the incentive for investment."

Of course, some think the Solyndra failure shows that the government isn’t investing smartly. But, while government subsidies have built-in problems -- most obviously, some money will go to projects that would have happened anyway -- there’s little sign that the Department of Energy has handed out money recklessly: the vetting process, which relied on three thousand outside experts, was unusually rigorous. Solyndra was a wager that went wrong, but failure is integral to the business of investing in new companies; many venture capitalists will tell you that, of the companies they fund, they expect a third, if not more, to fail. By those standards, the government is actually doing pretty well so far: under the stimulus program, the D.O.E. has handed out nearly twenty billion dollars in loan guarantees to renewable-energy companies, and only Solyndra has defaulted, accounting for a small fraction of the money guaranteed. Solyndra’s failure isn’t a reason for the government to give up on alternative energy, any more than the failure of Pets.com during the Internet bubble means that venture capital should steer clear of tech projects. [Emphasis added.]

And Surowiecki concludes with a point that's ignored by the right-wing liars and ignoramuses: "The government is already hopelessly entangled in the energy market."

As a new study by Nancy Pfund and Ben Healey shows, government subsidies have played a key role in the energy industry since the nineteenth century. The nuclear-power industry was effectively created by the government in the nineteen-fifties, and probably could not exist today without government guarantees. The coal industry was heavily subsidized during the nineteenth century. And the oil-and-gas industry has received tax breaks and allowances worth billions of dollars a year for more than half a century -- to say nothing of the implicit, but incredibly costly, subsidy that oil producers have received in the form of the Fifth and Sixth Fleets. On top of this, fossil-fuel producers are subsidized because the prices of their products don’t include the social costs they inflict on the environment -- pollution and greenhouse emissions. We already have an industrial policy on energy -- it’s just that it’s an industrial policy designed to subsidize and encourage the use of fossil fuels. An economist’s ideal solution to all this might be to repeal the oil industry’s tax breaks, tax carbon to reflect its social costs, and let the market work its magic. But that seems to be, at least for now, a political impossibility. Putting money into alternative energy is as close as we can get to levelling the playing field. Solyndra was a big bet that happened to go bad. But we probably need to be making more bets like it.

I'm guessing there are people in the administration who know all of this. Probably some of the right-wing scumbag liars know it too, but it's certainly not in their interest to 'fess up. And what the administration appears to be desperately short of is people who know anything about real honest-to-goodness messaging.

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Right-Wing Defeatist Cliff Stearns (R-FL): "We Can't Compete With China"

China invests in the future... the way the U.S. used to before the GOP losers took over

Anyone catch the History Channel's debut of History of the World in Two Hours this weekend? Better than Cupcake Wars which is beginning to wear a little thin lately. I found it interesting that they ranked the ability of communities to participate in trade with far off places as highly in the development of civilization as the use of the larynx, the taming of fire, the development of abstract thought/art, and the domestication of horses. Take away: trade is a big deal. Today one of my friend's brothers is flying to China with two all-American quarter horses. They want 'em; he's selling 'em. Good trade. I want to get to another kind of trade in a moment-- the kind of trade corrupt and reactionary Republican {{Cliff Stearns}} has in mind for China-- but first a little tangent.

In the years leading up to World War II there were a great number of right-wing members of Congress supporting European fascism, almost all of them Republicans, of course. Even during the war, there were Republican Members of Congress conspiring with Hitler and accepting campaign cash from the Germans and their allies. The Nazi's poured vast sums of money into the Republican efforts to defeat FDR and to elect pro-Nazi Republicans to Congress, failing with the former, succeeding with the latter.

Today America's most dangerous rival is China. And, needless to say, China's biggest advocates inside the U.S. Congress are almost entirely Republicans. Monday night there was a vote on doing something-- something supported by both business and labor interests-- about Chinese currency manipulation. Keep in mind that this continued currency manipulation has driven China's export juggernaut, and boosted the U.S.-China trade deficit to a record $273 billion last year-- something that has cost the U.S. almost 3 million jobs over the last 10 years. Aside from the two Democratic senators from Washington-- the state that actually profits most from China trade (like in the mechanism of trade itself rather than in good exchanged), all the senators who filibustered S.1619, the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Act of 2011, are conservative shills for China. All the Senate Tea Party Republicans lined up against the bill: Jim DeMint (R-SC), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Mike Lee (R-UT), Rand Paul (R-KY), Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Pat Toomey (R-PA). I'm sure it isn't a coincidence that these 6 have taken large sums of dubious campaign contributions from China through the Chamber of Commerce. So what's all this got to do with Stearns, who's never going to be a senator or anything more than a glorified backbencher? The jerk has a subcommittee chair and Cantor made him the point person on the dishonest right-wing attacks on clean energy. NPR dealt with him yesterday on All Things Considered:

New revelations continue to surface about the Obama administration's handling of half a billion dollars in federal loan guarantees to the now-bankrupt solar company Solyndra.
On Monday, Democrats released a memo that showed some voices inside the White House argued against President Obama's visit to Solyndra in May 2010.

But Solyndra was just one of the clean energy projects and businesses that got loan guarantees from a Department of Energy program that ended Friday. In all, it financed 28 projects with $16 billion in loan guarantees. The Energy Department says the projects will create about 17,000 construction and permanent jobs.

Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL), who chairs an energy and commerce subcommittee on oversight and investigations, originally supported the program when Congress created it.

Now he says, "I think the administration is putting taxpayers' money at risk in areas that are not creating jobs."

Stearns says he is "hugely critical" of how loans in the program have been handled. He says they were rushed out the door.

"We asked them to hold up any more loan guarantees so that they could be looked at more carefully, so we don't have any more Solyndras," he says.

For its part, the Department of Energy denies rushing its processes-- or playing politics. Over the weekend, Energy Secretary Steven Chu defended the loan program, saying the United States could not afford to give up investing in new energy technologies.

Kevin Smith, a CEO of SolarReserve, which is building a 2-mile-wide solar power generator in Tonopah, Nev., calls getting an Energy Department loan guarantee the most exhaustive vetting process he's been through in 25 years of working in energy.

"It was a pretty brutal due diligence process," Smith says.

The process took two years.

"Down to the level-- I mean, I had questions [such as], 'Kevin, you went to Sacramento on the 17th of February. Was that trip related to the Tonopah project?' You know, it's a $500 issue," Smith says.

SolarReserve received its $737 million loan earlier this month. Smith says he turned to the government because banks and private lenders simply were not lending enough for a project of this scale.

But he also says that doesn't mean his project is a risky investment for the taxpayer. SolarReserve is using a proven technology and already has a 25-year contract with a utility company.

"It's like us building a hotel and we've sold out 100 percent of the rooms for 25 years when we start construction," he says.

In fact, 16 of the 28 loan guarantees the Energy Department approved are for power generation projects like SolarReserve's. They have long-term contracts with utility firms or are subsidiary projects of utility companies.

That's why Rhone Resch, who heads the Solar Energy Industries Association, says the debate over what happened at Solyndra cannot inform the debate about clean energy investment overall.

"It's improper to view the entire industry through the lens of one failed company," he says.
Resch adds that in the past two years, solar companies have doubled their employment to 100,000 people.

"We're putting electricians, roofers and plumbers back to work in the solar industry after they've been let go by the housing industries," he says.

When Stearns, the Republican hosting the hearings on Solyndra, was asked about the seemingly low-risk revenue models of many of the loan guarantee recipients, he acknowledged those might be safer bets. But he still doesn't like the idea of government putting taxpayers on the line for other ventures.

"We can't compete with China to make solar panels and wind turbines," Stearns says.

He says he doesn't believe in any type of subsidy for industry. And, he says, where solar is concerned, it makes more sense to invest in research and development on a technology where the U.S. still has a chance of winning.

I don't know of any great new endeavors-- from the discovery of America to the development of the Internet, that weren't subsidized, at least in the initial phases, by the government. That's how big things get done. That's what Republicans don't understand about the role of government and why people like Cliff Stearns shouldn't be part of it. If we can't compete with China, it's because of degenerate right-wing ideology and degenerate right-wing ideologues... like Cliff Stearns. Steve Benen tore him a new asshole yesterday, although didn't mention any of the Chamber of Commerce contributions of Chinese cash into Stearns bulging warchest.

For nearly a year now, President Obama has pushed the line that the United States has to be prepared to “out-innovate, out-build, and out-compete” the rest of the world in the 21st century. Republicans have generally been hostile to such a proposition, largely because innovation and building requires investments they’re unwilling to make.

GOP officials are loath to admit it, but keeping the United States in a global leadership position in areas of technology and innovation simply isn’t a high priority. If Americans fall behind in global competition, for much of the right, it doesn’t much matter-- so long as the wealthy aren’t paying more in taxes.

...[O]n the one hand we see a White House committed to out-competing our international rivals, and on the other, we see leading congressional Republicans who believe the United States simply can’t keep up anymore, and is content to let China take the lead.

GOP officials, apparently, see this as a global competition, and are throwing in the towel.

Despite having a whopping 218 cosponsors-- including 60 Republicans-- Boehner and Cantor are refusing to allow the bill to be voted on in the House. Yesterday White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer voiced outrage over Stearns' defeatism.

A study released last month showed that, in spite of the intense global competition, the U.S. remains a net global exporter of solar technology-– with $5.6 billion in exports and an overall positive trade balance of $1.8 billion.

It is certainly true that China is playing to win. Last year alone, China offered its solar manufacturers $30 billion in government financing, vastly exceeding the U.S. investment. And China has overtaken the United States market share in solar power-– a technology we invented.

Chairman Stearns and other members of his party in Congress believe that America cannot, or should not, try to compete for jobs in a cutting edge and rapidly growing industry. We simply disagree: the answer to this challenge is not to wave the white flag and give up on American workers. America has never declared defeat after a single setback-– and we shouldn’t start now.

America’s entrepreneurs and innovators are still the very best in the world. Our workers are second to none-– and we have never been afraid of a challenge. It’s time to do what we’ve always done in the face of a tough competitor: roll up our sleeves and recapture the lead.

UPDATE: Final Vote Goes Badly For China Currency Manipulation

The final vote to end the Chamber of Commerce-sponsored filibuster on the currency manipulation bill succeeded, 62-38, winning with the 3/5 majority required to end filibisters. All the senators who took illegalk campaign contributions-- laundered through the Chamber of Commerce-- voted against American workers, particularly Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), Roy Blunt (R-MO), John Boozman (R-AR), John Cornyn (R-TX), Jim DeMint (R-SC), Dean Heller (R-NV), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Mark Kirk (R-IL), Mike Lee (R-UT), John McCain (R-AZ), Miss McConnell (R-KY), Rand Paul (R-KY), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Pat Toomey (R-PA) and, of course, David Diapers Vitter (R-LA). Corporate shill Claire McCaskill voted with the Republicans. A full dozen Republicans were willing to forego the bribes China was offering and voted instead for American interests. Scott Paul, who runs the Alliance for American Manufacturing:

“This is a major victory for American workers and manufacturers, and represents a new direction for our trade policy with China.

“Today’s cloture vote sends a clear message that the U.S. Senate intends to hold China accountable for its deliberate currency undervaluation.

“We congratulate the large, bipartisan team of Senators that have steadfastly pushed for China currency legislation. This bill will have a positive, lasting effect on American job creation, economic growth, and our manufacturing sector, at no cost to taxpayers. 
 
“As the Senate moves to a final vote, we hope the White House and House Republicans are paying clear attention. Voters are demanding action to defend American jobs and to create a level playing field for U.S. businesses. There is absolutely no excuse for further delay.”

Guest Post-- John Waltz (D-MI)

Seems these days wherever there's some kind of Republican hypocrisy explosion, we're finding Michigan SuperCommittee hereditary multimillionaire Fred Upton. So it didn't take long for Jed Lewison at Daily Kos to expose Upton's role in the Republican Party's trumped up attempt to politicize the Solyndra bankruptcy. Lewison makes the point that Upton "not only supported the program under which Solyndra received aide, [he] lobbied on behalf of companies in [his] district to receive the exact same sort of assistance... Upton not only helped pass the law, but he also used it to help his constituents. There's nothing wrong with that, but in light of his current scandalmongering, it's worth noting that less than two years ago, he was praising the Obama administration." Blue America has enthusiastically endorsed New Deal Democrat, John Waltz, for the MI-6 congressional seat that Upton thinks belongs to him. Please consider helping his campaign at our Blue America ActBlue page. We asked him to help explain a pattern of behavior by Upton in this matter.

Upton's Babies

by John Waltz

While our nation continues its economic struggles, Fred Upton has decided to distract everyone with a witch hunt. As soon as news broke of Solyndra going bankrupt, Upton went on to blast the program saying that Obama is trying to pick winners and losers. Without digressing into all the details of what happened with Solyndra, the real story is that Upton has no problem with our government picking winners and losers as long as they are his ‘winners’.

Among many of Upton’s ‘winners’ include heavily subsidizing the oil industry, securing nearly a billion dollars for factories, and his penchant for nuclear energy. The biggest federal grant request Upton asked for was $4 billion to expand the nuclear loan guarantee program. He knows the private sector would not even attempt building a nuclear facility without the full support of the government. 

This is another hypocritical play by Upton, where as long as it’s his ‘winner’ then it’s just ‘okie dokie’, but if Democrats ask for the same then it must be bad. I bet the millions he has received from energy companies helped sway this decision.

Republicans like Upton love to invest in the past by subsidizing fossil fuels and nuclear energy, which are obviously bad for the environment and do not help our nation progress to green energy. We have seen many times where nuclear power has created some of the worst disasters in history such as Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and in Japan after the earthquakes.

Just this week though in Michigan’s 6th Congressional District, we had a brush with disaster at the Palisades Nuclear Facility in South Haven. After an electrical accident, the plant had to vent radioactive steam into the air to stop a meltdown from happening. This accident came five short days after the plant had to shut down due to a leak in the plant’s cooling system.

It is bad enough the Kalamazoo River had a massive tar sand oil spill in July 2010, now we have to deal with the unknown effects of nuclear steam being pumped into our air? When will Upton get a clue? Being a Congressman is about representing the interests of your constituents, not a game where you are willing to sell us out to the highest corporate bidder to fill your campaign coffers. I guess if Upton had his way and dismantled the EPA then pesky nuclear accidents wouldn’t be an issue.

Another Pre-BIG-Scandal Buck McKeon Scandal

You could probably build a small home with all the botox in this photo

The point is being made-- loudly and clearly-- that while Republicans have been trying to politicize the Solyndra bankruptcy they themselves have been trying to steer $11.8 billion in loan guarantees to their own districts. It's the kind of hypocrisy we tied to Cliff Stearns (R-FL) over the weekend. Although Stephen Lacey hones in on corrupt and hypocritical Republicans like David Vitter (R-LA), Miss McConnell (R-KY), Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Fred Upton (R-MI), we've got a congresscritter right here in the L.A. area as guilty as the rest of them.

Buck McKeon-- soon to be drowning in a family bribery scandal-- has been one of the biggest corporate whores in Congress for years, taking massive bribes from shady for-profit college lenders and from shady war contractors, while he oversaw legislation in areas those special interested were especially interested in. Like his cronies Issa and Upton, McKeon has been a big proponent of wasting taxpayer dollars on dangerous nuclear facilities-- while taking gigantic bribes from the nuclear industry and while his Southern California constituents have very different ideas.

Forget crony capitalism. What we have here is phony capitalism.

A number of leading Republicans have repeatedly sought grants, tax credits and loan guarantees to support projects in their own districts. But when it’s politically advantageous, they now make the claim that government is “picking winners and losers” and violating the free market.

We all want to see taxpayer funds deployed as efficiently and fairly as possible.  Solar energy is soaring in this country and around the world, which suggests governmental support for the industry is working in a lot of countries. The nuclear industry has all but died in non-market economies, in spite of massive government support (see “Nuclear Pork-- Enough is Enough"). Which one is the winner and which is the loser?

General Atomics-- right up there among dozens of war contractors-- has been one of the biggest supporters of McKeon's political career-- $84,000 in legal contributions so far, his fifth biggest haul from any single company. Meanwhile, one of the biggest town's in McKeon's district (CA-25), Lancaster, was featured this week on NPR for going in an entirely different, non-McKeon backed, direction: solar. Transcript:

Lancaster, Calif., is just one struggling city that's beginning to invest in the sun.

ADRIENE HILL: New reports suggest renewable energy isn't the job engine that some hoped. But many struggling towns are paving the way for whatever green jobs they can get.

From the Marketplace sustainability desk, Eve Troeh reports.

EVE TROEH: Shoppers in the desert town of Lancaster, Calif., drive right past empty parking spaces near the front of a building. Here, a good spot means:

MAN: Shade.

TROEH: What happens if you don't find a spot in the shade?

MAN: You're gonna burn.

WOMAN: It's like walking into an inferno.

REX PARRIS: It's brutally painful.

That last voice is Lancaster mayor Rex Parris, at city hall. Even he had to park in the sun when he took office in 2008.

PARRIS: None of these were covered. You see, that's quite an expense.

Now, a private company-- Solar City-- has paid for roofs on public parking. It put solar panels on top, and sells the power to the city. It's one of many partnerships that's made Lancaster's city buildings 90 percent solar-powered.

PARRIS: And we sealed the cost at 13 cents a kilowatt.

Cheaper than the local utility. But Lancaster's got issues beyond hot cars and power bills, like high unemployment, rampant foreclosures. The last time the town really shone was the 1950s.

NEWSREEL: The Air Force rocket plane X-15 chalks up another record at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

From then until the '80s, research around the air base filled Lancaster with pilots and engineers. The mayor thinks solar start-ups can restore tech culture. He's offered tax breaks and fast-track permits.

PARRIS: If they come here, they can get on the grid faster, is really what it comes down to.

The city's cut paperwork for residential solar, too. That helped KB Home build its new all-solar subdivision: Arroyo. Vice president Tom DiPrima says it's selling.

TOM DIPRIMA: Thirty homes in about three months.

Families can get a solar system that covers almost all their energy.

DIPRIMA: The air's running, the lights are on in this house, but hen you look at the meter, it's barely turning.

But UCLA economist Jerry Nickelsburg says right now, solar power jobs are mostly short-term-- in construction.

JERRY NICKELSBURG: Renewable energy, once it's in place, typically does not take many employees to keep it going.

For real growth, Lancaster needs whole companies, and factories. A sunny reputation is just a start.

McKeon may not give a damn about clean energy or green energy or solar power-- or Lancaster for that matter-- but his Democratic opponent does. This morning Lee Rogers told us that "the solar industry in Lancaster is exactly the type of renewable energy in which we should invest... We need to put Californians back to work. Not only is it clean and efficient, but the industry has brought hundreds of jobs to Antelope Valley and will save the city millions of dollars in energy costs."

McKeon's 70 year old wife, Patricia, is running for the Assembly in the reddest part of his congressional district. Long his overpaid campaign treasurer (think back to the Doolittles)-- he's pushed over half a million dollars from his own campaign donations into "her" personal account (plus a $700/month Acura, all year long), Patricia also has a reputation of something of a bagwoman, accepting contributions from slimy war profiteers and anti-environmental outfits, i.e., people looking to funnel cash ole Buck's way... without triggering any icky congressional investigations.

More Republican Hypocrisy

Cliff Stearns (R-FL) changes his wigs frequently

I think when most people hear the term "Republican hypocrite," they get ready for another story of some crazed homophobic right-wing loon being dragged out of the closet after a career of opposing equality for the LGBT community. When you saw the headline above did you think it was time for a post about Aaron Schock, Patrick McHenry or Miss McConnell? Sorry to disappoint but there's a whole wide world of Republican hypocrisy above and beyond the world of closet cases. And today it's time to meet the Republican pointman on their trumped up Solyndra "scandal," Florida wingnut Cliff Stearns. This weekend, one of his district's most important newspapers, the Gainesville Sun, let his constituents know what a hypocrite the have representing them in Congress.

U.S. Rep. Cliff Stearns and his fellow Republicans have seized on the recent bankruptcy of Solyndra Inc. to discredit the Obama administration's efforts to stimulate renewable energy development and green job growth.

"I see no reason for the taxpayers to have any confidence that these funds could be spent wisely, and it should be returned to the Treasury to reduce our debt," Stearns said, calling the Obama administration's use of stimulus funds to encourage alternative energy development "suspect."

Funny, that's not what Stearns said last year, when the Energy Department provided $95.5 million to help Saft America Inc. open a lithium-ion battery plant in his district, at Cecil Commerce Center, in Jacksonville.

"I am honored to join in welcoming Saft's Li-ion battery manufacturing facility to the Cecil Commerce Center, which underscores that this is a good place to do business," Stearns said at the plant's ground-breaking.

"In addition, as a member of the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucus, I recognize the contributions of these advanced rechargeable batteries in meeting our energy needs."

Did it really take the bankruptcy of just one stimulus-supported solar energy manufacturer to turn Rep. Stearns sour on green energy development?

If so, that's too bad. Because America's competitors in China, Europe and elsewhere have no such reluctance about subsidizing the cutting edge technologies and alternative energy development that will be so crucial to economic success and job growth in the coming years.

Stearns was right the first time.

And {{Cliff Stearns}} is rarely right about anything... ever. With a breathtaking 4.60 lifetime ProgressivePunch score-- worse than Allen West's, Vern Buchanan's, and Taliban Dan Webster's-- Stearns is a strong proponent of ending Medicare and Social Security. Many in his district were alarmed because of his consistent votes against Medicare and Medicaid. The proposal he supported and voted for in April raises costs for seniors and individuals with disabilities enrolled in Medicare, reduces their benefits, and puts private insurance companies in charge of the program. For current beneficiaries, important benefits-- such as closing the hole in Medicare’s drug coverage-- would be immediately eliminated. For individuals age 54 and under, Medicare’s guarantee of comprehensive coverage would be replaced with a “voucher” or “premium support” to buy private health insurance. By design, this federal contribution does not keep pace with medical costs, shifting thousands of dollars in costs onto the individual. The Committee on Energy and Commerce did a study on how that would impact people who live in Stearns' bizarrely gerrymandered district stretching from the Republicans suburbs of Jacksonville and the Republican suburbs of Gaineville down to Ocala and Leesburg (FL-6).

The Republican proposal would have adverse impacts on seniors and disabled individuals in the district who are currently enrolled in Medicare. It would:

• Increase prescription drug costs for 9,500 Medicare beneficiaries in the district who enter the Part D donut hole, forcing them to pay an extra $93 million for drugs over the next decade.

• Eliminate new preventive care benefits for 143,000 Medicare beneficiaries in the district.

The Republican proposal would have even greater impacts on individuals in the district age 54 and younger who are not currently enrolled in Medicare. It would:

• Deny 580,000 individuals age 54 and younger in the district access to Medicare’s guaranteed benefits.

• Increase the out-of-pocket costs of health coverage by over $6,000 per year in 2022 and by almost $12,000 per year in 2032 for the 117,000 individuals in the district who are between the ages of 44 and 54.

• Require the 117,000 individuals in the district between the ages of 44 and 54 to save an additional $27.3 billion for their retirement-- an average of $182,000 to $287,000 per individual-- to pay for the increased cost of health coverage over their lifetimes. Younger residents of the district will have to save even higher amounts to cover their additional medical costs.

• Raise the Medicare eligibility age by at least one year to age 66 or more for 65,000 individuals in the district who are age 44 to 49 and by two years to age 67 for 461,000 individuals in the district who are age 43 or younger.

Stearns loves to talk about these extreme right bullshit in DC but it isn't something he's ever been willing to talk straight about with the voters in central Florida who keep, blindly, sending him back to Washington year after year.