Tea Party champion blocking Camp Lejeune water bill

South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, champion of the extremist Tea Party, has turned his venom toward North Carolina military families who were poisoned by their own government. The News and Observer reports

Thousands of sick Marine veterans and their families may be on the verge of taking a giant leap toward receiving health care for illnesses they suffered from decades of water contamination at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Legislation that has languished for years was expected to be voted on in the full Senate this week under an across-the-aisle deal between the Democratic and Republican leaders of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. But a South Carolina senator has blocked the bill, saying he worries about fraud.

The Senator is using a procedural tactic called a "hold," which allows any senator to unilaterally block a bill or other action, such as a nomination. In this case, a bill with widespread, bipartisan support is being blocked by a single ideological crank.

The most immediate consequence of Sen. DeMint's stunt is that it slows much-needed assistance for victims of the government's negligence. However, the Senator's unilateral action also keeps the Senate from considering other business. The types of holds have figured into the larger Republican strategy to slow everything in the Senate.

Step one for the Senate should be to pass this bill to help military families.

Step two should be to remove the undemocratic power of individual Senators to obstruct the nation's business.

New way to blame the 1960s

Robert Samuelson has found a new way to blame today's ills on the 1960s.

Wondering why government can’t restart the sluggish economy? Well, one reason is that we are still paying the price for the greatest blunder in domestic policy since World War II. This occurred a half-century ago and helps explain today’s policy paralysis. The history — largely unrecognized — is worth recalling.

Until the 1960s, Americans generally believed in low inflation and balanced budgets. President John Kennedy shared the consensus but was persuaded to change his mind. His economic advisers argued that, through deficit spending and modest increases in inflation, government could raise economic growth, lower unemployment and smooth business cycles.

None of this proved true; all of it led to grief.

Samuelson is so focused on the 1960s that he seems to overlook the fact that the budget was in balance in the late 1990s and thrown back into deficit in the 2000s through the profligacy of the Bush administration, whose fiscal policies were neatly summed up by Vice President Cheney--"deficits don't matter."

Republicans' dismal jobs record in NC

In an article in yesterday's News and Observer, Republican legislative leaders in North Carolina were touting how promising their jobs record was.

In discussing their economic policies, Republicans often use a farming metaphor the folks in Edgecombe understand: Fertile soil will produce jobs. With business-friendly policies and a low-tax environment, they argue, new companies will relocate to the state and existing ones will grow.

“I think we are seeing some green shoots,” said Tillis, the House leader and a business consultant. He still wears the same red “Think Jobs” wristband from the 2010 campaign. “I think there are reasons to be optimistic.”

In an interview last week, Tillis staked a claim on the state’s sputtering economy, even though his party blames Democrats for the current situation.

“This is our economy,” Tillis said. “I am fully confident. I want to own this economy. It is our responsibility. We did a good job of starting, and we’ve got a lot of unraveling to do of bad policies that have hamstrung us that cannot be undone overnight.”

The fertilizer metaphor is apt--Rep. Tillis is spreading bullsh*t.

In the 16 full months that have elapsed since the Republicans came to power in North Carolina and for which we have state jobs data (Feb. 2011-May 2012), the state has shed jobs in eight, including six of the 11 months that have elapsed since the Republican's austerity budget was enacted.

Republicans blame a weak national economy, but the national economy has added jobs in every one of those months.

Republicans also blame Democrats, but the Republican budget is leading to less job growth. In the 11 months since the Republicans' budget was enacted, the state has added a measly 12,900 jobs; in the 11 preceding months (and during a much weaker economy), the state added 47,200.

If this is Republicans' "good start," one can only imagine what the finish will look like.

If it makes you happy...

What had Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH) screaming like a Banshee yesterday?

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Oh right, the false initial report that some 30 million or so of her fellow citizens, including millions with pre-existing medical conditions, would continue to go without health insurance coverage.

(Rumor has it that Rep. Schmidt later gave Meg Ryan a good run for her money with her reaction to the House's contemptible contempt vote against Attorney General Holder).

Imagine what could be accomplished if Rep. Schmidt and her colleagues put half as much enthusiasm into finding common-ground solutions to problems like health care, the budget, entitlement reform, and the economy instead of gainsaying everything that Democrats propose and manufacturing crises.

Praiseworthy

It wasn't long ago that former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney praised individual health insurance mandates.



But his position has, well, evolved.

Former Gov. Romney has also praised Supreme Court Justice John Roberts.

As president, Mitt will nominate judges in the mold of Chief Justice Roberts...

I wonder if that position will evolve too.

Getting Subsidized Food All Over Your Family

The U.S. federal government funds several large food assistance programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly the Food Stamp Program), the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), the School Breakfast Program (SBP), and the Supplemental (WIC). In FY 2011, the federal costs for these programs were $75.3 billion, $11.3 billion, $3.0 billion, and $7.2 billion, respectively. The programs all share a common goal of helping disadvantaged people get access to more nutritious food than they could otherwise afford, but the programs differ in how they try to achieve that goal. The SNAP increases food resources for entire families, while the other programs only benefit specific members. In particular, the NSLP and SBP are targeted at school children, and WIC is targeted at infants, very young children, and pregnant, postpartum, and breastfeeding women.

A natural question regarding the targeted programs (natural to an economist anyway) is "do they benefit other members of a household?" Consider the WIC program. WIC provides its beneficiaries with vouchers that can be used for specific foods--for example, juice, milk, regular cereal, eggs and legumes for beneficiaries who are young children or mothers. In a household that also includes older children, it's possible (and maybe even reasonable to expect) that those children might consume some of the food that was intended for their mother or younger siblings.

The SBP and NSLP programs are different in that they serve meals outside the home and directly to their beneficiaries, so other household members can't literally take the food out of the school children's mouths. However, families can redirect resources. If participating families would have otherwise spent money on school-day breakfasts or lunches for their children, they could redirect that money to other members' food consumption.

A UNCG Ph.D. student, Jonathan Woodward, and I received a small grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to look at these issues, using 2002-3 survey data from the Child Development Supplement (CDS) of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). The CDS is really helpful in this regard because it asked 1,744 children aged 10 or older about the foods they usually ate for breakfast and the foods that they had eaten in all meals during the previous week. The CDS and the PSID also asked about households' participation in each of the food assistance programs described above and about other economic and demographic characteristics of the households.

Results from Jonathan's and my research were just published in the open-access journal, Food and Nutrition Sciences. We found evidence that was consistent with targeted food assistance being shared. Specifically, school children who had mothers or younger siblings who received WIC reported drinking more milk and eating more cereal (foods that are in the WIC basket) for breakfast than other school children but also reported eating less toast (a food that isn't in the WIC basket). School children also benefited from the programs that were supposed to help them, generally eating more if they got school meals or if their families received SNAP.

An implication from this research is that it is really hard to target benefits for specific family members. In the case of WIC, we might consider whether it's really worth operating a separate program to do this or whether we should just fold the program into the larger SNAP. Merging the programs would allow for administrative efficiencies for the government and for households. Part of the cost savings could be used to expand benefits and participation among the intended recipients of WIC (WIC isn't able to help all eligible mothers and children now). Part of the savings could also go to deficit reduction. Families would also probably appreciate this because it would give them more flexibility in purchasing food.

Party of None of the Above

People have discussed a lot of motives behind Republicans' obstructionism.

A simpler motive, however, is that Republicans just want to put their collective heads in the sand.

Slate reports on people's responses about ways to cut the deficit.



When Republican legislators vote "no" on everything, they're just following the childish, fairy-tale wishes of their party members.

Sea-level rise along East Coast faster than thought

The News-Observer reports

From Cape Hatteras, N.C., to just north of Boston, sea levels are rising much faster than they are around the globe, putting one of the world's most costly coasts in danger of flooding, government researchers report.

U.S. Geological Survey scientists call the 600-mile swath a "hot spot" for climbing sea levels caused by global warming. Along the region, the Atlantic Ocean is rising at an annual rate three times to four times faster than the global average since 1990, according to the study published Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

The story continues

Those estimates became an issue in North Carolina recently when the Legislature proposed using historic figures to calculate future sea levels, rejecting higher rates from a state panel of experts. The USGS study suggests an even higher level than the panel's estimate for 2100.

Meanwhile, the radical North Carolina legislature continues to push legislation that would constrain the Coastal Resources Commission from considering the full range of evidence and modeling in projecting sea-level rise for regulatory purposes.

Will the NC legislature regulate land subsidence too?

The Washington Post reported yesterday on the special sea-level challenges faced by our northern neighbor, Norfolk, VA. Besides facing a rising sea, Norfolk is subsiding, meaning that its relative sea-level rise is faster than other areas.

In Norfolk, Virginia’s second-largest city, with 250,000 residents, Faella’s concerns aren’t the isolated fears of one woman living on the river’s edge. The entire city is worried. Miles of waterways that add to Norfolk’s charm are also a major threat in the era of increased global warming and relative rising sea levels, as well as its odd and unique sinking ground.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warns that Hampton Roads, anchored by Norfolk, is at the greatest risk from sea-level rise for a metro area its size, save for New Orleans.

Problems with subsidence, however, are not unique to Norfolk. Sections of North Carolina also have a history of sinking. The NC Department of Environmental and Natural Resources commissioned a study in 1993 that showed that Kinston and New Bern subsided at a rate of just over .15 inches per year from 1935-1978/9.

NC land subsidence is actually a feature in the larger global debate on sea-level rise. Global-warming skeptics cite NC's history of subsidence as one reason why measured sea-level rise may be less than it appears.

As Norfolk's soggy experience shows, the academic debate over whether sinking land or rising seas contributes more to relative sea-level changes doesn't matter much in coastal communities.

Deterioration in NC employment situation accelerates

North Carolina's employment situation, which had stalled in recent months, has now taken a decided step downward. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today that the state lost 16,500 jobs between April and May on a seasonally-adjusted basis. The big loss follows smaller losses in the preceding two months. The losses were widespread across industries with construction losing 4,800 jobs, professional and business services losing 7,000 jobs, private education and health services losing 2,600 jobs, and leisure and hospitality losing 3,600 jobs.

The state's unemployment rate remained at 9.4 percent on a seasonally-adjusted basis. The seemingly neutral figure, however, masks some worsening numbers. First, North Carolina's unemployment rate is now the third highest in the nation, trailing only California and Nevada. Second, while the number of unemployed people (people who aren't working but are looking for work) fell by 3,700, the number of people who reported looking for work fell by 9,500.

The situation for the state's unemployed is grimmer still with the expiration of extended unemployment insurance benefits. The loss of those benefits may account for some of the decrease in the number of unemployed--some people may have been looking for work just to continue receiving the benefits.

Meanwhile, our state legislature, which is taking a break today, has found time this week to regulate cold medicine, substitute its radical view for expert scientific judgment, and maintain a $3,500 tax break ($141 million total cost) for wealthy business owners.

Jobs first? Not with this bunch.

And the taxi driver?

Steven Kopits at foreignpolicy.com has written a thought-provoking article about how autonomous driving technology (the ability of cars to drive themselves without human input) will facilitate a shift from buying cars to buying car services.

For the last several years, Google has been testing self-driving cars, primarily in California and Nevada. Its vehicles use lasers, radars, and other sensors to establish their position and identify objects around them. This data is interpreted by artificial intelligence software that enables the vehicle to drive itself. Google's vehicles have now proved themselves in hundreds of thousands of miles on the road. And Google's not the only game in town. Bosch is also developing the technology, and Cadillac has promised to have a car capable of driving autonomously on the highway by 2015. Self-driving technology is gradually moving to commercialization, and when it does, it will liberate the car from its driver, enabling a vehicle to serve more users.

According to the Transportation Department, the average U.S. vehicle is used less than one hour per day -- a utilization rate of about 5 percent. Many Americans only drive their cars to work, park, and leave them until they drive home at night, making them essentially unavailable for use by others for most of the day. But if the car could drive itself, it could return home to take the children to school, members of the family shopping, and seniors to visit friends or keep appointments. If the vehicle served even one additional passenger, its utilization rate would double, and its capital cost per user would fall by half.

Kopits writes about this in the context of making electric cars affordable. The car-as-service model would allow for the (presently) necessary recharging of batteries. The high utilization rates would also help to cover the high capital costs of the cars.

As interesting is was what Kopits doesn't write about--the effect on labor. Car services would cut into, if not eliminate, traditional taxi and limo services. Essentially, you get the service without the driver. Indeed, it's the lack of a driver--or more specifically, the lack of having to pay a driver--that would make the service cost-effective.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that nearly a quarter of a million people in the U.S. were employed as taxi drivers or chauffeurs in 2010 and that the number of jobs is expected to increase by 20 percent over the next decade (faster than other occupations). The work does not require any special experience or education; the BLS lists the entry-level education as less than high school. Also, the job requires minimal training. The pay, at approximately $22,440 per year or $10.79 per hour, is sub-par, but there is pay.

There would certainly be a lot of benefits with self-driving cars, but to borrow from Cheryl Crow, taxi jobs might "real gone" sooner than you think.



BTW, don't even get me started about Pixar taking all those great acting jobs away.

Households' net wealth dropped 39% from 2007 to 2010

The Washington Post reports on newly released figures from the Federal Reserve that show that median household net worth dropped by 39 percent from 2007 to 2010.

The net worth of the American family has fallen to its lowest level in two decades, according to government data released Monday, driven by a more than 40 percent drop in their stakes in their homes.

The Federal Reserve’s detailed survey of consumer finances showed families’ median wealth plunged from $126,400 in 2007 to $77,300 in 2010 — a 39 percent decline. That put them on par with median wealth in 1992.

Sadly, there's little reason to think that the wealth figures have improved much since 2010. Although the stock market has recovered, housing prices continue to drift down. Suppressed wealth will continue to be a drag on the economy.

Science-suppression legislation to be debated today in NC Senate

If you thought that this Kevin Costner bomb was over the top; prepare yourself for something even sillier.




Legislation to suppress the forecasts of the NC Coastal Resources Commission's Science Panel on Coastal Hazards will be debated in the NC Senate today. Under the Dome reports

Bloggers and TV comics have ridiculed it, and now state legislators will get their first chance Thursday to debate unusual legislation that would put tight restrictions on how state and local agencies cope with rising sea levels.

The Senate Agriculture, Environment and Natural Resources Committee will air the proposal, which was drafted by Republicans in response to controversy over a state-appointed science panel’s warning that a rise of one meter (39 inches) is likely by the end of this century.

If the legislation goes through, new roads, bridges, utilities, and other public infrastructure could be put at risk by being placed in areas of rising waters. Subsidized development might also be encouraged in areas that may become a flood risk.

It would be one thing if private developers using entirely private money wanted to develop these areas. However, the developers inevitably reach into the public purse for infrastructure. Also, when disasters happen, the victims will expect (and will almost certainly receive) help. Don't look for the developers to be offering to help those victims then.

Public decision-making in this case entails two types of risks. Over-preparing (relying on a forecast that is too pessimistic) would be wasteful because it would involve either building too many protections or not building at all. However, under-preparing is likely worse because the entire initial investment could be lost. Under-preparing could also put lives at risk.

The science panel provided a range of forecasts; the one-meter projection was near the middle of this range. The forecasts were also in line with those of other state coastal agencies. The panel further recommended  refining the forecasts every five years.

The forecast that would be mandated under the legislation would actually be substantially below the lowest forecast that the panel made. Relying on this wish, rather than the panel's judgment, would be a short-term boon for developers, but would likely bring high costs to other taxpayers.

North Carolina shouldn't substitute developers' wishes for sound, scientific judgment.

NC: Economic growth but little job growth

The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released figures this morning showing that total inflation-adjusted output in North Carolina grew 1.8 percent in 2011, after growing 2.5 percent in 2010. The state's growth in 2011 was higher than the national rate of 1.5 percent and the southeastern state average of 0.9 percent.

Growth in NC was led by an increase in manufacturing, which contributed 0.8 percent, and finance and insurance, which contributed another 0.45 percent.

For the second year in a row, economic growth in the state outpaced population growth. On a per capita basis, economic growth increased 0.8 percent in 2011, putting North Carolina 17th among the 50 states and DC.

Despite this growth in output, North Carolina added fewer than 34,000 non-farm jobs in 2011, a growth rate of only 0.9 percent. Nationally, the job growth was much closer to output growth at 1.4 percent.

The Chamber of Commerce and the Republican legislature claim that a poor business climate is holding back job growth. North Carolina businesses, however, appear to be performing better than the national average--they also got a nice break in their tax rates. Maybe it's time for businesses to show a little of that love to the state's workforce.

The horrors of carbon cap-and-trade

Horrible things are happening in 10 states north of North Carolina, where irresponsible do-gooders have implemented a carbon cap-and-trade system...that just might be working.

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, Inc. (RGGI) reported yesterday that CO₂ emissions in the 10 states that participate in the cap and trade program were 23 percent lower in 2009-2011 than in the preceding three years, even though electricity use only declined 2.4 percent.

The changes in climate policy did not appear to hurt the states' economic growth. Inflation-adjusted gross state products in the 10 RGGI states increased by 1.4 percent from 2008 to 2011 compared to 0.5 percent in non-RGGI states. From 2006-2008 the change in inflation-adjusted gross state products in RGGI and non-RGGI states was identical.

Abusive priests' $20K good-bye gifts

If you thought that the moral rot among the Catholic Church's hierarchy couldn't go much deeper, think again.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports

The Archdiocese of Milwaukee confirmed Wednesday that it paid suspected pedophile priests to surrender their clerical collars, after a document surfaced in its bankruptcy discussing a 2003 proposal to pay $20,000 to "unassignable priests" who accept laicization.

The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests characterized the payments as payoffs and bonuses to priests who molested children, noting it was just $10,000 less than the $30,000 the archdiocese hoped to pay victims, according to the same document.

The Milwaukee Archdiocese, which was able to afford $20,000 going-away gifts for abusive priests and has bemoaned "infringement of government in the practice of (its) faith," is now using that same federal government to infringe on the legitimate claims of its victims.

The leader of the archdiocese at the time of the payments, then-Archbishop Timothy Dolan, is now a prominent cardinal.

Dolan then and archdiocese officials now have defended the practice as expedient--it got abusive priests out the door more quickly. And in a further display of moral repugnance, an archdiocese spokesperson blamed the survivors' organization, saying that it was the organization that wanted the priests thrown out. This follows Dolan's own efforts to discredit and delegitimize the organization.

BTW, can anyone explain why $20,000 is such a popular figure for making your "problem people" go away?

NC House gives a lesson in fungibility

Most introductory economics classes teach students about fungibility--the simple insight is that money is money. If you give people money for one purpose, they can easily spend it for another.

I usually teach this with an example of a grandparent's gift to a student to buy books. Suppose that a student has $1,000 in her budget at the start of the semester, which she has to allocate between books and her other expenses (Starbucks, new shoes, pizza, etc.). The student's grandmother sends $100 to be used exclusively for books. Will the student's book expenditures go up by $100? Probably not. If the student was already going to spend some money to buy books, she can use her grandmother's gift to offset those expenditures, and use the freed up money to buy other things. The student can abide by the letter of her grandmother's wishes by spending the $100 on books, but the student might go against the spirit of those wishes by increasing her overall book spending by less than $100 (or perhaps not increasing her book spending at all). At the end of the day, $1,000 in unrestricted money plus $100 in restricted money leads to choices that are similar to or the same as $1,100 in unrestricted money--$1,100 is $1,100.

The North Carolina House of Representative is offering a much better (and bitter) lesson than my dry classroom example. The Charlotte Observer reports that the House is proposing to play a similar shell game with money that the state will be receiving from the large legal settlement with mortgage companies and that was supposed to go to help homeowners hurt by mortgage shenanigans.

The North Carolina House budget, which was approved Wednesday, could use nearly $23 million from a blockbuster legal settlement with the nation’s largest mortgage servicers to plug budget gaps, joining dozens of states in redirecting money intended to help struggling homeowners.

Though law enforcement and housing advocates will still receive the millions directed to them in the settlement, the House budget also encourages state agencies to use settlement dollars to make up for cuts in other places.

In total, about one-third of the money sent to the North Carolina state government could be used to fill holes in the $20.3 billion budget introduced Tuesday.

So how does the House's shell game work? Consider the NC Housing Finance Agency. Under the terms of the settlement with the mortgage companies, $30.6 million in settlement funds was to go to this agency to help pay for counselors and legal representation to help struggling homeowners avoid foreclosure. Under the House plan, North Carolina would technically keep its end of the bargain, adding $30.6 million to the agency's budget. However, the House has also proposed cutting $4.3 million from another part of the agency's budget and using that money for other purposes. The net result is that only $26.3 million is actually added to the budget.

Another $2.9 million was supposed to boost the ability of the State Bureau of Investigation to investigate financial crimes. However, through the magic of fungibility, the $2.9 million that is added to that part of the SBI's budget will be offset with an equal-sized cut, and the freed-up money will be used to cover a new earmarked crime lab in Henderson County. The net result will be no additional capability to go after the criminals who prey on homeowners.

Effectively, the House is proposing to tax the funds that are slated to help homeowners. Of the $49 million in restricted funds that were supposed to help homeowners, the House would claw back $7.5 million or about 15 percent of the take. And that amount is on top of $16 million that was already going to general purposes in the state budget.

The House's message to homeowners? You've been helped quite enough, thank you.

Clean coal?

Ed Cone's post on the declining but still substantial demand for coal got me thinking about all of that "clean coal" that we keep hearing about.

You've seen the commercials.



If you visit the AmericasPower.org web-site, you can go to a nifty page that tells you that "Now is the time to get smart about clean coal electricity." That page provides a clickable map of all 50 states but no information whatsoever about using coal more cleanly.

You can also go to an Issues and Policy page that appears to oppose every policy that is currently proposed to clean up existing coal electricity plants.

You can also go to other pages that describe all sorts of technologies that could clean up coal if only the federal government would pony up all sorts of money. "Of course, these continued innovations require investment from both private industry and the American government."

None of it seems very clean, but they sure do use the word a lot.

Breaking news from the Edwards jury!

Evidence that the out-of-town press is getting punchy at the John Edwards trial. The Washington Post reports

Something exceedingly strange is happening at the John Edwards trial: all four alternate jurors dressed in red shirts Friday. They each wore bright yellow the day before.

Coincidence? Few here think so.

Zzzzz.

Questions about Gov. Romney being a unicorn

The presidential campaign of former Mass. governor Mitt Romney has been hit with a troublesome and quite possibly disqualifying accusation--that he might be a unicorn.

Leftaction.com is circulating an on-line petition asking the Arizona Secretary of State (who is currently investigating President Obama's birth records) to investigate Gov. Romney's non-unicorn bonafides. The petition asks

What about the persistent rumors that Mitt Romney is in fact, a unicorn?  There has never been a conclusive DNA test proving that Mitt Romney is not a unicorn.  We have never seen him without his hair -- hair that could be covering up a horn. 

No, we cannot prove it.  But we cannot prove that it is not the case.  And if Mitt Romney is or may be a unicorn, he is not Constitutionally qualified to be president.

Acceptable proof on this matter would consist of a DNA sample from Gov. Romney and a DNA sample from a unicorn. With those samples, establishing the dissimilarities (assuming that there are any) would be straightforward.

America is at a cross-roads, and the focus of the coming election must be on jobs and economic growth. The question about whether Gov. Romney is actually a unicorn is an unwelcome and unnecessary distraction in this important process--but it is a question that Gov. Romney should have already put to rest.

For reasons that only he can comprehend, Gov. Romney has not been forthcoming on this matter. Thank goodness there is an Arizona Secretary of State who is capable of leading a complete and impartial investigation.